For Project 2, the task was to create some kind of interactive device that was meaningful or useful in some way. It took me a long time to think of an idea that I was somewhat passionate about while staying within the scope of this class. I work in an office that provides a service to CU students, and the day before the project proposal was due I was speaking with my boss about how everyone we work with (mostly the two of us) could improve their language in the office. From this conversation, I arrived at the idea of creating an interactive “swear jar” that would sense when someone swore and alert them to put money in the jar.

VOICE RECOGNITION/CODE
To start my project, I needed to figure out how to do voice recognition so I looked around online at many different pieces of voice recognition hardware, since this task is not currently possible purely through software. I decided that the VeeaR EasyVR Shield 3.0 would work well for my purposes and I ordered it through SparkFun. The shield arrived and I soldered all the necessary connections and looked at a demo arduino sketch to get started. Once I had the shield setup, I began to think about what words I would …show more content…
Among the feedback that I chose to incorporate was sensing when the user actually payed to hold them accountable and also to keep track of how much money was in the jar using the seven segment display. For sensing when the user paid, I used a IR distance sensor installed inside the jar beneath the coin slot. When a coin was dropped, it would pass over the sensor and the distance reading would then drop. Based on this, I could accurately sense when the user paid and continue prompting them to pay until they did so. I also added a variable to my code to keep track of total money paid, and I displayed this number at all times on the seven segment display. See APPENDIX B for a circuit diagram of all my