Crossed Wires

Abstract

Considerable research has focused on the problems that end users face when programming software, in order to help them overcome their difficulties, but there is little research into the problems that arise in physical computing when end users construct circuits and program them. In an empirical study, we observed end-user developers as they connected a temperature sensor to an Arduino microcontroller and visualized its readings using LEDs. We investigated how many problems participants encountered, the problem locations, and whether they were overcome. We show that most fatal faults were due to incorrect circuit construction, and that often problems were wrongly diagnosed as program bugs. Whereas there are development environments that help end users create and debug software, there is currently little analogous support for physical computing tasks. Our work is a first step towards building appropriate tools that support end-user developers in overcoming obstacles when constructing physical computing artifacts.

Heimdall

“…A key result was that "most fatal faults were due to incorrect circuit construction, and that often problems were wrongly diagnosed as program bugs." [5] Mellis et al report on workshops that engaged amateurs in circuit board design, finding -similarly to software -that participants had difficulty formulating hypotheses, but with the added complication that it was unclear whether a problem was mechanical (loose wire), related to a component (defective, wrong polarity), or related to their circuit design [20]. This implies that tools should help students narrow the type of problem they are experiencing.…”

A Conversation with Actuators

“…In physical computing environments, the conversation is relatively expensive. Support for physical debugging is particularly limited [5], with more critical errors occurring across digital to physical translation. Programming is additionally complicated by the time-consuming need to flash code to microcontrollers, limiting exploratory behaviors in favor of attaining a minimal viable product.…”

Beyond Schematic Capture

“…Beyond board design tools, some recent work focuses on electronics prototyping. Fritzing [20] aims to ease the transition from breadboards to PCBs, CircuitStack [37] adds a printed connectivity layer to breadboards, and Crossed Wires [8] examines issues in breadboard circuit construction.…”