Physical Computing

Play LAB
Lets play with Technology!

About Us
Play LAB is a start-up operating in the field of Education Technology co-founded by students of Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology. We are passionate about changing the learning system in Indian Schools and Colleges and want to stress on the importance of innovation and creativity rather than mere learning or knowledge gain. We plan to conduct workshops where we want to break the conventional stereotype of technology that is fit into everyone of us and instead use technology just as a tool. Here technology is used to make things more intuitive and fun. We aim to combine creativity with technology to enable students to come up with innovative ideas and encourage them to experiment. We want to cut the hype about technology and let people get their hands dirty with it and start using it to make things. We have been involved in organizing workshops, talks and sessions on Physical Computing and Interaction Design, Robotics and Internet of things for the past 3 years at our college through the activities of our club Special Interest Group-Embedded. We also receive a lot of help and guidance from our friends over at National Institute of Design and this creates a completely different kind of learning environment for the students. This experience has driven our passion to bring about a change in the learning system and we believe that a combination of Design & Technology is the need of the hour.

Physical Computing
Physical computing, in the broadest sense, means building interactive physical systems by the use of software and hardware that can sense and respond to the analog world. Physical computing is a creative framework for understanding human beings' relationship to the digital world. We need to think about computers that sense more of your body, serve you in more places, and convey physical expression in addition to information. We need to think about computing rather than computers. Computers should take whatever physical form suits our needs for computing.

Our Approach
To make learning the tools easier, we focus on using the popular platform Arduino. By interfacing various sensors & actuators with Arduino, students can prototype their ideas. During the session we decide on a particular theme like story-telling, game controllers, music, e-textiles, lights, nature, social cause etc. and ask students to brainstorm some ideas. We then discuss their ideas and assist them to start working on their idea rather than simply instructing them step by step. By doing such exercise we enable them to solve a problem by combining their creativity and technology. We encourage participants and play with technology and thus learn more about it.

Workshop Kit
The kit for the workshop would contain the following components: Arduino Leonardo 3-axis Accelerometer *Servo Motor LEDs Light Sensors Mini Speaker Condensed Microphone Knob Potentiometer Button Switches Breadboard Connector Wires Art & Craft material

We would be covering the interfacing of these components with Arduino and help students in developing various prototypes complete with their physical product and interface design too. At the end of the workshop, each team would have come up with innovative prototypes and they will get a chance to see multiple applications of the similar technologies. To organize a workshop playlabindia@gmail.com in your college, contact us at

*The Servo Motor can be purchased by paying an additional amount of Rs.400/- per team.

Contact Us
Email: playlabindia@gmail.com Phone: +919016504411 +919408533211