James Alfei edited Our Prototype.tex  about 10 years ago

Commit id: 8a5a686043afd7ff48f0adf80ddd96fcdebf007e

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Now that the user can zoom and navigate around, to make use of the new 3D imagery and height mapping available in Google Earth, the joystick has been implemented to look around both vertically and rotate around the z axis. This movement is triggered when the jostick is moved beyond a certain threshold in the x or y axis. When this occurs, the camera can point up or down (by pushing the joystick up or down respectively) as well as look left and right using the same physical pushes on the joystick. This movement is fluid and feels natural in its use.  One of the more interesting features of the system is that of the RFID sensor. We have 3 tags available in the system. Each of these tags has a predefined location within the software upon first run. These work in a way such that when a tag is scanned, an event is fired within the software to detect the unique tag that was scanned. Upon detection, the software will look up the stored location (e.g. Swansea University). We then use a combination of virtual mouse click and keyboard presses to effectively "Search" for the location. This operation is hidden behind the physical screen cover of the system. Although a great feature, fixed RFID tags can be quite limited in their scope. These may prove to be ideal for a museum style environment, however we decided that in order to develop a system that can cater for a range of environments, we would need to be able to reprogram these tags "on the fly". To demonstrate this, we used the pressure sensor of the phidget kits to effectively act as a reprogramming button. If the button was depressed past a certain threshold, that would tell the software to put the RFID scanner into "reporgramming mode". From here, the system would still operate completely as normal, apart from a visual cue on screen alerting the user that reprogramming mode is active, and the RFID scanner waiting for a tag to be detected. Upon detected a tag, a piece of code would be launched that will automatically action a placemarker within google maps. The coordinates will then be copied to the system clipboard. After this has been done, the coordinates will be parsed correctly into the software and saved to the unique RFID tag. Upon a subsequent detection of that RFID tag, the search would launch for a specific latitude and longitude coordinate saved from before. This produces the desired result of saving and retrieving a location using reporgrammable RFID tags.  We believe that the final system is intuitive and logical in its usage and implementation, and allows a full sense of feedback and interaction to the user.