The competition is almost over and as always, there are still things to do! Not all of them necessary, but all are great fun!
The assembling of the ColorCam is what's first on the list. The foam I used for the interior of the camera is perfect. It holds everything together nicely and it makes the camera very soft. I cut away a lot of foam to make room for the Flora, the pixels, on/off-button, shutterbutton, batterypack, colorsensor and some wires. 
Thank to Victors solderingskills, this is is what the interior looks like now:
That's back, front and inside..
So pretty much everything is there except the..... Conductive fabric buttons on the back! I need to get those installed tonight. I already glued them to the felt outside of the camera, but I couldn't get them to work properly on the battery. They worked fine while the Flora was in the USBport, but when it runs on the batterypack they don't work. So I consulted my inhouse helpdesk and he found another way to hook up the conductive fabric to the Flora. This seems to work. We're going to have to make some changes in the code as well, but I'm sure we'll get it done tonight! I'll write a blogpost tomorrow showing how we attached the conductive fabric and how we got it to work on the batteries.
There are some other issues that've been bothering me for some time now. They have to do with the colorsensor. It sensed the colors pretty good, but that was when it was set up in my prototype. Now it is set in foam, it doesn't work as well as I hoped it would. I cut away some foam to make sure the sensor would fit nicely. In the felt I use for the outside of the camera, I cut a hole for the light of the onboard LED and for the sensor to be able to perform. I can't cut the hole too wide because it would leave the sensor too vulnerable. But cutting the hole too narrow means the light coming from the LED reflects on the felt as well as on the color you wanted to sense. So the color you see in the pixel is a mixture of the actual color and a lot of yellow.. So that's one thing I'm trying to figure out. I can't use a plexiglass cover to protect the sensor because it will only reflect more light, and I can't cut a wider hole.. Hmpf! I'm going to figure something out, but I'm not sure how just yet
The other issue with the sensor is that the object whose color you want to pick up, needs to be very close to the sensor. Like real real close. I've been experimenting with that using a lens and that gives me some extra centimeters. I'm not sure I'll be able to insert that in my camera before my final post on friday, but I'll try..
Also, I came up with a new feature that comes with the ColorCam. It's soft and it has a lot of colors! A nice and handy extra for the kids No sneak-peek this time.. I'll show you guys tomorrow!
Thanks for reading, suggestions/comments are welcome as always!
Linda
