Wet Yourself Laughing

Prototype implementation of a bodily play EMS game in which players control how much their opponent is tickled by a feather by smiling, and must not laugh lest their own water balloon burst. This game was developed as a part of the unit FIT2082: Computer Science Research Project at Monash University.

Structure

There are essentially two components to this software:

• The python code, which is really the brains of the game; and
• The Arduino controller code, which is used to switch the EMS signal.

Running

The game should be run by executing py wysl at the root of this repo. Make sure all dependencies are installed first.

Configuration

The game is fairly configurable. Configuration fields, types and defaults are shown below.

Section	Key	Type	Default	Description
expression	camera_index	int	0	Index of the video input to use for expression recognition
expression	mtcnn	bool	False	Whether or not to use the MTCNN network to find faces. More accurate but slower
expression	happy_weight	int	1	Weight of the 'happy' expression when calculating the weighted average expression
expression	surprise_weight	int	1	Weight of the 'surprised' expression when calculating the weighted average expression
expression	low_threshhold	float	0.2	Threshold for a smile to be considered low intensity
expression	medium_threshhold	float	0.3	Threshold for a smile to be considered medium intensity
expression	high_threshhold	float	0.4	Threshold for a smile to be considered high intensity
laughter	microphone_index	int	0	Index of the audio input to use for laughter detection
laughter	chunk_duration	float	0.05	Length of an audio segment that will be taken for laughter detection
laughter	threshhold	float		Minimum volume required to record a hit
laughter	records	int	10	Number of recently recorded volumes to keep
laughter	hits	int	5	Number of hits required to trigger laughter detection
arduino	port	str		Identifier of the port to which the Arduino is connected (ex. "COM5"
arduino	baudrate	int	9600	Baudrate of the serial connection to the Arduino
network	remote_ip	str		IP v4 address of the other player's machine
network	remote_port	int	5005	Port on the other player's machine to which to send UDP packets
network	local_ip	str		Local IP v4 address of this machine. Can be detected by setup
network	local_port	int	5005	Local port for receiving UDP packets from the other player's machine
game	slower_tickle	int	1000	Rate at which to pulse EMS on the player's feather hand for a slower tickle
game	slow_tickle	int	500	Rate at which to pulse EMS on the player's feather hand for a slow tickle
game	fast_tickle	int	250	Rate at which to pulse EMS on the player's feather hand for a fast tickle
game	faster_tickle	int	100	Rate at which to pulse EMS on the player's feather hand for a faster tickle
game	feather_channel	int	1	Which relay the EMS for the player's feather hand is connected to
game	balloon_channel	int	2	Which relay the EMS for the player's balloon hand is connected to
game	squeeze_duration	float	5.0	How long to squeeze the balloon for before assuming it has burst

The controler

The Arduino controller code enables the relays on the Arduino to be controlled and queried via serial to allow digital switching of EMS from other programs. It supports the following commands:

Command	Syntax	Return
Switch relay on	+<relay>	[Nothing]
Switch relay off	-<relay>	[Nothing]
Periodically pulse relay	!<relay><interval>	[Nothing]
Query relay state	?<relay>	0 if off; 1 if on

• <relay> must be one of 'A', 'B', 'C' or 'D' for relays 1-4, respectively. Currently, relay 1 maps to pin 35, 2 to 37, 3 to 39 and 4 to 41.
• <interval> must be an integer number of milliseconds to wait between switching the state of the given relay. The interval between successive switches should always be equal to or exceed this interval. Set to 0 to disable pulsing the relay. Note that the state of the relay after pulsing is stopped is not guaranteed.

For example, to turn relay 1 on, you would send +A. To turn it off, -A. To pulse it 10 times per second, !A100. And to check if it's on or off, ?A (which would send back 0 or 1).

Known issues

• The configuration filename is currently hard-coded and configuration object is loaded outside of a method, class or if __name__ == '__main__'
• The waveform plotting is very inelegant.
• The keyboard loop should probably be the parent thread.
• Game exit is not graceful, as the keyboard thread is not terminated automatically.
• The two layers of input with the same prompt is confusing.