final project ideation

Garrick, Chris and I have teamed up for our Prototyping Studio final project; our idea is to create some sort of drum machine with a visual component.

This weekend we met up to brainstorm. I opened up my fancy new Touch Board and, with the help of electric paint, made my first ever musical instrument. 

While an incredibly rad sensor to work with, electric paint is merely touch and motion sensitive, and not sensitive to pressure, a necessity for any decent drum machine.

While waiting on the other sensors to be delivered, we continued the ideation process. We tossed around all sorts of ideas from bubble machines (with bubble size correlating to intensity of drumming), to LED light displays and everything in between, before deciding on our first official idea: a cajon that, when played, paints a picture by either setting off cans of spray paint in a rotating device (the piece of paper rotating around the cans of paint), or a design inspired by old school spin art. This would not only be fun to play, but also interesting to watch, and would allow users to walk away with a piece of art created by their music.

eat my shorts

...and cookies.

Our rapid prototyping challenge this week: 3d modeling and printing.

I think I'll design some bad ass Simpsons cookie cutters, starting with Bart.

Perhaps I'll bake Thursday night and bring some Simpsons cookies to studio Friday.

After creating the Bart cutter, I'll either work on other characters or make a cutter of his face and another of his shorts, for obvious Bart-quoting purposes.

Simpspiration:

+ cookie cutter inspiration:

final project found /here/

love bytes

this week's assignment involves electronics prototyping, which I've been looking forward to since, more or less, the beginning of time, so I wanted to attempt a few different projects. I really wanna get my hands dirty and experiment with everything!

one of the projects I'm working on is a drawBot, which first involves 3d printing the necessary parts to build the bot; I was able to print the pieces at the design lab at school in just under three hours.

now that I have the plastic parts needed, along with scissors, a mini screwdriver, a zip tie and a rubber band, I'm just waiting on the micro servo motors to arrive so I can construct the bot and move on to the programming!

while waiting on the micro servers, as well as the RGB LEDs required for a different project I intend to complete, I decided to experiment with the lilypad arduino, learning how to sew it to fabric with conductive thread. luckily, after an hour or so of reading, learning, messing up and trying again, I was able to get the lilypad and battery pack correctly sewn to a tote I had lying around, + to + and - to -, without any overlap, so that it could be powered and working without any computer connections.

the next step would be adding red LEDs to the heart and programming them to light up in some sort of compelling pattern or design. this specific project does not interest me much, it is merely a first attempt at experimenting with the lilypad arduino, an opportunity to learn and practice so I can create awesome wearable and textile electronic projects in the future.

final project page can be seen /here/