The Charette Cart Came 'Round

When we met on Sunday we had decided to come prepared with materials to have a 3D brainstorming session, a charette.  We talked briefly about various inspirations we've had or found regarding the emotional goal we have for our project.  We then broke up to individually start making something, anything, that had to do with our goal of creating a physical system/object that facilitates an emotional connection to technology, particularly solar energy and heliotropism.

This is what we made:

Lindsey

Marc

Rachel

Eric

Z

Myself

After what I'm fairly certain was an hour of intense cardboard craftery, we came together to talk about what we'd made and what we'd thought about while we were constructing.

We ultimately chose the form that Lindsey came up with.  A chair that, when unused, is a heliotropic solar surface, but when an individual comes near it folds into an interactive chair.

Final Project- Design discussion

So, discussion in our group has been really interesting.  When we presented no one really seemed to understand what we ultimately wanted to make, which was completely understandable as we didn't really give anything that specific in our presentation.  However, we do have a very defined objective.  We started our thought process by defining how we wanted to work together, what we each wanted to achieve, what our group values were for this project, and what we were each interested in contributing and learning from this final task.

I've never worked in a group where we so thoroughly discussed our position, our objectives, our purpose, our "How? Why? Who? What?" questions. But I have to say I really appreciate this expression of purpose. As we work this way, by re-checking that we are indeed keeping in harmony with the personal variables we expressed, we ensure that we're moving in a direction that allows each of us to individually be excited about the project. 

Now I'll come back to the actual idea. We each presented what we were interested in, talking about different types of solar panels, emulating radical energy production research, and creating a purely hedonistic experience with the aid of technology.

When we hit on the hedonism idea, everyone got really excited, talking about ways we could create something that makes you happy.  The direction the discussion was taking, I was genuinely worried that the happy factor was the only factor. Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with making people happy.  I was worried that, seeing as this course satisfies my senior design requirement and as such I want it to be something worth talking to companies and graduate schools about. I felt a great deal of trepidation about moving rapidly in the direction of something that reads your feelings and responds, which, while very interesting, still made me feel like I was going to make a furby.

However, as we talked more, and narrowed down our specifcations for function, I felt less uncomfortable with our idea. We gravitated toward something that provides a positive emotional experience with technology oriented toward human service and, while not providing energy to the grid, self sustained through the sun's energy.

What we ultimately funneled our ideas down to were these three things:
A physically interactive surface
       -Marc envisioned a bus stop wall that envelops the individual waiting for the bus to provide warmth and protection from the weather.  Remaining stationary when the weather is nice, or there are no patrons waiting for the bus, and moving the shield people when there is wind or rain.
       -Lindsey talked a great deal about the hugging trees a presentor at the Future of Design conference spoke about, drawing as her idea a wall of "fingers" that would move toward people as they moved around the wall, reaching out, touching, or holding.

A single module capable of aggregating with other modules to interact and create a social experience
       -a unit that would move around an area, someone's yard or a park, collecting energy from sunlight, and interacting with people as it moves around

A wall composed of many small modules that interacts with the user- a combination of the wall and single module ideas
       -I pictured many small units creating a surface that individually are capable of minimal interaction with the user and each other, but as a surface of units have a high level of interaction and function.   I suppose I could use the example of a puzzle piece, each one has a small amount of information it can provide and limited interaction with the pieces around it, but when they are all assembled you have an entire image and a completely different function.

I suppose that's enough discussion for now, I'll post more of our work when I remember to bring my camera with me to the computer lab, I haven't had a laptop for the past two weeks due to a shorted motherboard.  It's easy to surmise that my computer access is limited to when I'm on campus and not in class or in meetings for Smartsurfaces and homework.

 Here are some neat things I saw online while looking for images for our presentation.

Touch Shield for Arduino

This this is really the most lovely thing I think I've ever seen. Liquidware Shop is where I found it and I think that looking through this site will be really useful in getting ideas as to what components we can be looking for for prototyping as well as final design component purchasing

I think this touch screen is something we could really utilize in our Modular Emotionally Responsive

One of my biggest focuses for this final project is being able to utilize solar cells/photovoltaic technologies in new ways by losing the traditional solar panel structure. 
Printed Solar Cells

 Printed Solar Cell Video- This is kind of hilarious, it vaguely describes how the cells are made and work

A practical Smartsurface?

I promise I'm in the process of completing my entry on our second week task (Task 2 if you will).  That will be up with video and pictures shortly.

I found, while looking at Practical Arduino, a blog posting about Kitchen Cabinets That Open With a Wave of a Homeowner's Hand.  Personally I like to see all the appliances in the kitchen, but this is definitely an interesting idea. A surface that responds to motion, as well as direct user input (the touch screen.) It's very sleek, but the thing I don't think will be so clever is repair if things stop working.

I think that in designing anything that involves sale to someone with no technical experience it's important to take into consideration how dumb people are.  I'm not saying that everyone ever is unintelligent, but you have the underside of your  mother's iron, requesting that you refrain from ironing your clothes while you're still wearing them for a very good reason.  I can't say one person has done this, I can say that many people have done this, and continue to iron their clothes while still dressed in them.

So my opinion? This is really neat, but I'm more interested in thinking about, and eventually creating, a surface that improves our world, not something that makes rich people lazier.





I thought this video was really neat.  Neil had talked about wanting to set up an LED display to show what data our sensors would be reading.  This does something similar, only with a video directing the behavior of the LEDs.

Task 2: Heliotropic Light Sensor

he objective of this second task was to create a light detector that follows the light source the detector is exposed to. We obtained code fromhttp://arduinofun.com/blog/?p=529, which directs servo motion to the left or the right based on a comparison of the intensity of light detected by two LDR light sensors. We altered the code from the blog to accommodate three sensors, the third placed in the center of the two to determine when the light was located directly at the center. Six sensors were used in total, three for the x-axis controlling servo, attached at the bottom of the cardboard column, and three used for the y-axis, a sideways placed servo at the top of the column.








Group work this week went much better than the first week, at least in my opinion. I know I felt more involved in the design and problem solving process than I had the first week, and I can say I was more excited about the development of the result, as well as the thought process for improving and strengthening our design.

A comment on our group dynamics- There were two group members who, in the first day of working, seemed to have a hard time getting involved, and another who, again in the first day, was at a loss for most of our time how they could be involved in the development. However, when we had some more specific roles in building, programming, and trouble shooting, it was clear that the members who hadn't been as involved in thinking about the programming and mechanics of the design, could be more involved in the actual fabrication and assembly of the detector. This situation definitely brought to my attention the differences in our educations. I hadn't expected individuals to watch and wait until we reached a point that they felt they understood and could contribute to.  In my experience in the engineering school, if you don't understand something you ask questions until you understand and know what's happening and how you can give your input. This isn't a criticism, but more a realization that not everyone is willing to ask questions.

I hope that realizing this tendency is something that I can help prevent in future groups. It's important to have everyone involved in giving input, as well as to be able to feel excited about the decisions the group is making. This isn't a class where partial participation works, everyone needs to contribute and work to achieve the very lofty goals we have set before us, and the easier we make this for other people, the more exciting things we'll be able to develop and build together!

Task 4- Foray into Adobe Illustrator and Prototype Development

After today's meeting to lay down a more concrete vision and plan I decided that instead of taking a picture of what I'd drawn, I'd actually try to put it into a more legible form.

This is what I made in Adobe Illustrator, which, I will admit, was quite an adventure.  I didn't know what a lot of the hidden functions of things were so it was a very trial and error creation.  The smallest hexagonal shapes are the bubbles, or pillows, that we discussed in the previous iteration of our project design. in each cell there are 13 small bubbles connected to one another. The idea was that we could connect four of these cells and have them fill and empty simultaneously.  Each of these four cell units would connect to a pipe loop encompassing the entire surface.

 

This is one such arrangement of the units.       

This is another one I thought would make the assembly a little clearer.

Initially I had a difficult time figuring out what controls, buttons, and erratic behaviors resulted in what in AI, but after about half an hour I figured it out.  I really enjoy doing stuff like this, being able to create wonderful visualizations of what I'm thinking that clearly portray the intention of my design.

I have to say I also really love designing things like this, in MSE I don't typically have much occasion, if any, to do anything like this.  I actually sincerely thought about going into industrial design so that I could do stuff like this, at least as far as my perception of the field lead me to believe.

Tonight I'll be working on servo-valve assembly, and hopefully helping Neil with the coding for making all  of this be able to be synced with the data being read from a flex resistor on one of the cells to determine fill rate.

Task 4- Make a Smart Surface--Design possibility

Just drawing out what I think we discussed as a group.  A series of "bubble" layers to be filled layer by layer in a predetermined sequence and rate.  Sorry for the poor quality, I decided it would just be easier to take a picture of my diagram than try to make it on one program or another.

I just have to figure out what kind of solenoid valve we can use/cheaply get our hands on.  I've found some really cheap ones on a surplus website Surplus Shed but they state purpose for low volume air and vacuum applications.  Ideally we'd like to be able to use water, but I feel if part availability/price states that filling the bubbles with air is the cheapest and easiest way, you don't argue, especially with a two week deadline.

I also found a range of solenoid valves through an irrigation parts website General Imsubs.  I can't begin to express how cool I'd feel if I was the group using an irrigation solenoid valve.

As Neil and I work on this more I'll be able to walk through more detail of how we'll fill the bubbles, but again, material supply will strongly determine what we can actually accomplish.

Task 3- Heliotropic field

The objective was to create a field of cell components that all respond and change according to the intensity and movement of the sun throughout the day and year. My group decided to use a shifting plane mechanism to move cells with the rotation of the sun. Two servos were programmed in near unison to pull, with a lever arm, the plane, which is used to maintain parallel motion of the dowels, in a parabola.  The rudimentary design process we went through can be found here, here, and here.  


How we made it work:


Allison had cut a sample planes at half the size, 6"x6", we used for the final, 12"x12", to give us the opportunity to see how the planes needed to move in relation to each other.  After determining that T-pins were an insufficient method of securing the dowels to the chipboard base, I suggested we use the sewing pins I happened to have at home.  Someone had mentioned a desire to emulate a ball joint and I realized that I had the means by which we could accomplish that very thing.

This is a close up of the pins inserted into the dowels.  The base was a layer of chipboard with very small holes laser cut into it, and glued onto a layer of foam core.  The pins pushed into the chipboard and on top of the foam created the secure, but perfectly functioning, ball joints.

To keep the top plane from slipping down the dowels we wrapped a thick wire around the dowels in a lowercase t shape. The purpose of the upper plane was to guide the dowels in a parallel manner so that the direction of each dowel was the same as all other dowels.

At first we attempted to use twine and thick rubber bands from Task 1. We found the rubber bands from our box were far to resistant to the strength of the servos we were provided.

We used smaller rubber bands as a second iteration. We determined that attaching the servos, arduino, and rubber bands to a permanent structure, or two crossed, narrow wood pieces, would provide the stability needed to maintain the integrity of the design.

The final design was attached to a wooden "x." The intent of the attached curved "petals" was to emulate what we would have liked to achieve with more time.  The reflector petals were to respond and open with the movement of the plane.  We had figured out a simple mechanism of a string attached to a stationary point (one of the planes) and the petal to pull against a spring hinge (how the petals would be affixed to the dowels) on the petal.  When the plane moved the string for the petal in the direction of the movement would tighten and pull against the spring of that petal.  Effectively opening the petal.  As the planes move to turn the petals, surrounding an LDR or solar collection device, toward a light source, the petals would open or close to focus the light on the collection device.  For presentation we made a working model of the petal open/close mechanism, a digital project filed emulating the projected behavior, and taped the petals onto the dowels in the hopes that it would hold together long enough to run the device in presentation.


I'd say it worked pretty well.



The servos were struggling a bit during the presentation and discussion. It may have been the force of the rubber bands over a much longer run time than we'd ever used in testing for functionality.

As for an analysis of group work this week- I feel like our group dynamics were great. I sincerely enjoyed working with everyone on the team.  I really appreciate the effort we made to join as many of the group members' ideas into the final product without inhibiting function and purpose.

Task 4- Make a Smart Surface

Friday during class we had a difficult time being able to come up with an idea, and not just a single idea, any idea that more than one of us could latch onto. We had a very difficult time having trains of thought that happened to stop at the same station for any measurable period of time. So, because we had such a trial in the brainstorming process, a couple of us met on Sunday to discuss some other ideas that had come up in idea development.

What we discussed:

Brieana had mentioned a desire to use the arduino to power a pump to inflate something, using inspiration of changing the elevation of buildings to protect the structures from frequent flood damage, i.e. homes in monsoon season. I had been interested in developing a surface similar to the lotus leaf, as we had discussed them in class that day. A lotus leave, while appearing smooth and hydrophilic at a faraway view, has a very intricate 3D microstructure on the surface that traps and uses the water to clean the surface as the droplets slide down the leaf to result in a "self cleaning" behavior. Thinking of a way to emulate a surface like that, and wanting to be able to have something that could change from a 3D surface to a 2D surface to result in a surface that behaves hydrophilically when in a 3D state, and hydrophobically in a 2D state.

So, I combined Brieana's idea with mine, if we sized down the bubbles of her design, and connected them in a grid, essentially resulting in a bubble wrap style surface, we could potentially use that surface in many different applications.

When we met again today we discussed various combinations of everyone's ideas from Friday we actually came to the conclusion that a system of water inflated bubbles could potentially be used in many, many different ways. I felt much better about our discussion today. We had an achievable design that, as we discussed, was applicable in many of the same ways we'd wanted our previous ideas to be applied. We were also all able to be excited and happy about what we were discussing and planning. This was most definitely a vast improvement on how we'd worked on Friday.

So, in thinking of ways to utilize an arduino, I wanted to link to a number of blogs and forums that have different projects that have used arduinos to control the flow of water.

Practical Arduino is a really great blog for ideas. The author whose blog postings are the ones I've read, there are two authors as far as I've seen, has done a lot of interesting and practical projects with arduinos and I think will have a very strong relevancy to a great many of the things we'll be working on as the semester progresses.

Biopsia Project I found this website, that has several artistic collaboration projects listed, by searching arduino water pump on google. They used an arduino and a solenoid valve to control a water pump to drop droplets of water from the ceiling at a user determined rate.

Some other water oriented topics I found in the Arduino Forum:

Motion Activated Water Cannon

5-12V Water pump control problems

I also found this neat video of using an arduino and solenoids to bang out music on a surface