US Cube

• Brainstormed and prototyped the device's enclosing
• Programmed Adafruit NRF52 devices to recognize each other and produce the same color output
• Played around with color theory to produce more effective color results
• Worked with Arduino to program the Adafruit boards

OVERVIEW

Using an Adafruit Feather NRF52, we were able to broadcast and scan for peripheral NRF52 devices using Bluetooth LE. Once they detect each other, they all uniquely turn the same color until they move out of range. This project involved both hardware and software components. Software wise, we worked in Arduino to program the Adafruit boards. Hardware wise, we experimented on the cubes' encasing, as well as the wiring needed to create the physical structures and functions.

PROCESS

Software:

In order to develop these friendship cubes, each cube needed to accomplish three tasks: 1) broadcast itself to other BLE devices, 2) scan for nearby Adafruit BLE devices, and 3) set its own color. The programming involved was rather straightforward. In order for the cubes to sync up to a color, we needed to make sure every cube in range calculated the color the same way. Luckily, BLE devices have a unique identification badge. So the idea of the cubes in a nutshell is to 1) know your own ID, 2) get the IDs of the peripheral devices in range, 3) sort this list of IDs (including yourself), and 4) create a color from this sorted list. In our case, we decided to hash the IDs in a way that produced varying colors.