Robert Zacharias

I am an Assistant Teaching Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. I teach in IDeATe, and my formal academic appointment is at the ETC (Entertainment Technology Center).

In addition to teaching, I manage IDeATe’s Physical Computing Lab, room A10, in Hunt Library.

You can reach me by writing rzachari@andrew.cmu.education, minus the cation, or swing by my office: room A9A in Hunt Library (across the hall from the Physical Computing Lab).

Teaching

I currently teach:

• Introduction to Physical Computing, 60-223, a 10-credit semester course covering elementary electrical engineering, programming in C/C++, and building interactivity into objects for the purpose of improving and enriching people’s lives. The final project for the class for ~6 years consisted of building a novel assistive device for a person living with a disability; more recently the course’s final design client is an office here at CMU. Please go to the course site and click the “student gallery” link to see the current semester’s student efforts, or click the “Previous semesters” link to see student work beginning in the spring of 2018.

• Advanced Physical Computing, 62-423, a 10-credit semester course assuming prerequisite student knowledge about physical computing, and spending the entire semester working on designing, prototyping, and fabricating assistive devices for people living with disability. In the fall of 2025, we are working with The Children’s Home of Pittsburgh to build toys for some of their patients/students.

• Introduction to Arduino, 99-355, a 1-credit, 15-hour rapid-learning workshop course in the basics of Arduino use for beginners. The learning sequence for this course is used in a handful of other courses at CMU and in at least one high school that I’m aware of; if you’d like me to share the associated Canvas modules, please get in touch. The video sequence is available here.

Retired/special/on-hiatus courses

• Retro Game Lab, 53-374 (offered once in Spring 2024 and likely to be reworked for future offerings) was a practicum returning to the ideas and techniques of electromechanical games, using 1950’s and 1960’s technologies that underlie pinball machines. The course was offered by the ETC and hosted in IDeATe’s Physical Computing Lab. Our students designed and built table-scale interactive games with moving parts, relays, lights, and solenoids to ding actual bells!

• Electronic Logics && Creative Practice, 62-362 (no longer offered). Developed with CMU Libraries colleage Heidi Wiren Kébé in 2019, and subsequently co-taught with Erin Mallea, and Petra Floyd. A 12-credit semester course motivated by rich foundational ideas from electrical and computer engineering, which are used to inform and drive artful interactive objects and performances.

  • The fall 2024 iteration of the course featured a novel speaker-driven laser Lissajous curve generator and a dollhouse with a working scale computer display inside.
  • The fall 2023 iteration of the course featured a mechanical computer to help make healthier life choices; a “strategic orbital bomber” dystopian mechanical computer; and a stress-responsive water dispenser using strings and pulleys to sum a user’s stress levels.
  • The fall 2022 iteration of the course featured a paint-pumping canvas, a Cold-War era style missile control system, and a receipt printer that gave out bad advice; the semester-end show was held in WQED’s Studio A, the same space where Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood was filmed.
  • The fall 2021 iteration of the course culminated in a multimedia performance evening called “Between Air and Waterlines” in the College of Fine Arts (CFA) building on campus.
  • The fall 2020 iteration of the course produced some wonderful work under very trying (and hybrid learning) circumstances.
  • The fall 2019 iteration of the course culminated in a multimedia performance evening, “Every Possible Utterance,” with other IDeATe courses at Pittsburgh’s new MuseumLab.

ioRef

In collaboration with faculty members Daragh Byrne (School of Architecture) and Marti Louw (Human-Computer Interaction Institute), I have been developing a suite of learning tools to help neophyte students of physical computing better understand how to design and build functioning devices.

The system is called “ioRef” (the name refers to a particular electrical pin on the Arduino board), and it consists of:

• A deck of printed-out reference cards which allow for tangible interactive learning and manipulation,
• A correlating reference website, ioref.org, with detailed information about physical computing electronics components, sample circuits and code, and rich cross-referencing, and
• A customized schematic and block diagram drawing platform, available at draw.ioref.org, which allows students to simply create clean and legible schematic drawings.

There is ongoing student-supported work to add deeper technical functionality to the main ioRef website, as well as strengthen the cross-references between various technical components and student projects that employ those components in quotidian and unusual ways.

Physical Computing Lab

The current stock levels of all regularly stocked electronics items in the Physical Computing lab can be found by visiting our inventory page. If you have questions about our inventory, suggestions for additional items you think we should carry, or any other comments about the room, please get in touch with me; I’m always looking to improve the space.

Recommendation letters

If you are interested in my writing a recommendation letter for you, please see this page for information and instructions.

Independent studies

If you’re interested in my advising an independent study of yours, please see this page for further information.

…and lastly

Some years ago I took pictures on January 1st on a frozen lake in upstate New York. Mr. Blobby immediately endeared himself to me for obvious reasons, and though his physical manifestation may have moved on in the spring thaw, his spirit, and big blobby nose, are still with us today in this digital form.