Interface and Application Programming:

I decided to use the temperature sensor I made during the Input Devices class (and its accompanying code) as a base. If you want to read about how I made this temperature sensor, please refer to this page.

I hooked up the temperature sensor to my computer and ran the original code, as a quick refresher to see what the interface looked like. Neil's original design is a simple white box with a red increasing bar inside a blue bar, with a text indicator as well.

I then opened up the Python file that came with the temperature sensor, and I started rooting around inside.
I quickly noticed a couple of variables I could easily start playing with. I saw a few references to HTML colour codes, so I decided to change those. I looked up a list of colour codes (found here) and started plugging in some new colours.
Another variable I changed was the defined font used for the text displaying the temperature.
A quick check showed me that I now had a new background colour, and also changed the colours of the text and the bars.

In the code I also noticed that it pulled from a library called Tkinter for certain graphic displays (such as the canvas that creates the bars). I looked up what kinds of commands you can apply to these, and found a few useful resources.
Pages I found particularly useful were the resource available at effbot and Tutorials Point.

Most of the changes I then made were applied to the Canvas, as I understood that that was the window being drawn.
I changed

root.title('hello.temp.45.py (q to exit)')

root.title('What temperature is it? (Press Q to exit)')

In the canvas I then found a line creating a rectangle. On the effbot resource page I found that you could also use different geometric shapes. I decided to change the blue bar to an ellipse, and keep the red bar as red. This basically has the red bar squishing a blue ball as the temperature rises.

I also added a line of text above the bar using the create.text canvas command.
After all these changes, I was left with this:

I then tried to change the bars to images, or even to just add an image to the window. Unfortunately, this is something I couldn't figure out well enough. I tried adding the images to the code using the PhotoImage definitions provided for Tkinter, but I kept getting syntax errors with whatever code I put in.
I decided to scrap the images and try something else.

Checkboxes!

Tkinter has a references to checkboxes, so I added a few. After adding the code, the checkboxes actually showed up in another window. I noticed a definition called 'master' in the code I had added that was defined as Tk(). The canvas window had a similar definition, but as 'root'.
After I changed the references to 'master' to 'root', the checkboxes now appeared in the same window as the temperature bar, but under the canvas. I wasn't able to figure out how to add it to the canvas, but now that they're in the same window I wasn't too bothered.

Checking and unchecking the boxes is fun, but I wanted something to happen. Luckily, I figured out you can add a 'command' to the checkbox that is executed as you click on it. I combined the command with another one called tkMessageBox, which pops up a small dialog with some text.
This worked, except that the dialog appears when you both check or uncheck the boxes, and there's no way that I could get it to only execute on checking the box.

I cut my losses and continued on. There was already a command to shut down the application (by pressing Q), but I figured I could add a button to the interface that would do the same. The idea behind it is that it's easier to figure out if you have a visual cue.

I was able to add a button to the program, but if I tried to add it to the 'root' window, Python would crash. I tried a few different things, but I ended up having the button show up in a different window. I basically made a new definition attached to Tk(), and added a line of code to it:

Button(quittles, text='Quit', command=quit).grid(row=3, sticky=W, pady=4)

If you're interested, the modified code for this assignment can be found on the Assignment Files page!