When first starting University we had 6 weeks of Activity Lead Learning where by we formed groups of 6 and were given the challenge to create a 3D Etch-a-sketch. Each week we were given a new task such as adding a new feature to our program or testing for usability.

During the 6 weeks I took a main role in programming as I have a lot of previous experience in programming however I have never really done any 3d work so this was still a great learning experience. Our final application met all of the specifications we had been given and we even added some of our own features.

The most difficult part of the 6 weeks was creating the hardware for our etch-a-sketch. I had never done anything like this before however I did pick it up quite quickly and managed to create all sorts of things including flashing disco lights and we even attempted to create a flashing cube however we lacked the amount LED’s we wanted. After spending a lot of times creating things with the Arduino we finally decided to start working on the task we had been set which proved more difficult than we thought because the values turned out to be inconsistent which made the etch-a-sketch jump around a lot. Eventually we decided to use the hardware to control the color of the line rather than controlling the line and this worked well.

One of the last tasks of the 6 weeks was to create a Viral Video to advertise our Etch-a-Sketch and get as many people to visit our website and download our etch-a-sketch as possible. We spent a lot of time trying to think of a good idea for a Viral Video and in the end decided to dress up in animal costumes and make fools of ourselves at the park. Our video turned out more successful than we thought it would and over time we have accumulated 7,000 hits on our video.

Download Our Etch-a-Sketch Application

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