My goal for this week was to change the color of an RGB LED based on the acceleration sensed by the IMU. I started by programming my board to just change the color of an RGB LED. I did this part when I was mad last week and wanted to take a break from dealing with the IMU so I used the SAMD11C board from that couldn't work with the IMU but had an LED. I wanted to just make the LED change color, but it wasn't turning on at all. Upon closer inspection with Anthony's help, we realized that I forgot to give the LED power! I added a jumper wire to connect the LED to 3V3 and everything worked! I wrote a simple program to change the color of the LED continuously.

Next, I involved the IMU using my successful board from last week. Because of the limited storage on the SAMD21E, I couldn't write very complicated programs. So I wrote a program to make the LED red, green, or blue based on whether the z, x, or y-axis was facing downwards. For example, if the z axis is facing downwards, then the x and y acceleration will be 0 and the z acceleration will be g (gravitational acceleration) even if the IMU is still. The same logic applies to the other axes.

Using that idea, I wrote a program to detect a flicking gesture by checking if the state of the IMU changes from z-axis downwards to y-axis downwards. When the gesture is detected, the LED turns on. Now if I stuck the board to a stick, I would have a very basic magic wand working!