For lab 2, choose on of the following: If you choose the eyeglass-based display, for next lab, choose one of:
We will develop a very simple eyeglass-based display, in order to understand more sophisticated eyeglass-based displays.

Our simple display will take the form of a cybernetic timer that will give you a background awareness of the passage of time.

The cybernetic timer can be used to:

Most inexperienced presenters are too slow getting started, then have to hurry at the end to catch up.

A light that flashes once every minute, counting in binary, with 4 lights, could help you through a 15 minute presentation, by conveying a subtle sense of time.

Other tasks that can be helped with a tempo timer:

Part one: Pace and tempo timer

Build something that flashes a small light at a steady rate. This device can be mounted inside eyeglasses as a pacetempo clock. You can add more lights, e.g. to make a 4-led display.

Part two: Sequencing

Many tasks involve a sequence of events. For example, walking involves a sequence of steps: "left, right, left, right, ..." and so on. Playing music involves a sequence of beats such as "one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, ...", or "one and two and three and four and one and ...".

A sequence timer consists of a plurality of lights. A cybernetic jogging aid would consist of two lights, one for the left foot and one for the right food. For example, a blue LED might flash to indicate when your left foot should hit the ground, and a red LED might flash to indicate when your right foot should hit the ground. For music in 4/ time, you might have four lights that flash in sequence, one for each beat of a bar.

Build something that flashes a plurality of lights in sequence, at a steady rate.

You can use discrete logic, such as a 7490 and 7441, or you can use a microcontroller like Atmega 48.

You might find this ECE385 course page useful, as well as the Atmega48 pinout, and programmer construction info.

Here is an example program that flashes 8 lights in sequence.

Optics, part one:

Make a simple device that could be used in eyeglasses to focus an image of some object, like a small piece of newspaper, onto your field of view, overlayed onto reality.

Optics, part two:

Replace the object with the set of lights from another participant in the lab.