this is the completion of the dark room and to add ventilation to it as i assume it will be really hot and there might be fire hazard if the hot air or smoke is not being ventilated out of IM room.
the pipe for the air pump for soldering in im room was damaged so i’ve repaired it
repair completed
I’ve purchased 4.2m of PVC pipe and ask the seller to cut it into 1m length for easier transportation
but I realised that i need the full 4.2m in the end so I stick them back
I also fasten the 4.3m PVC pipe to a bamboo pole to increase the strength. the machine was placed at the only openable window to draw the smoke out
did a marking from the inside of the dark room for the ventilation pipe
I screwed the 90 degree bracket to secure the pipe
forcing the pipe in
and secured using wires and ropes
tapped from the outside as well as inside.
the bottom of the walls
tapped it securely to increase structural strength and remove light leaks
the top of the opening of the dark room
fasten a wooden plank for structural support as well as to finish the roof.
final piece of roof
previous ziptie were removed and re-fastened for the final roof piece
roof folded down
cardboards were cutted for a smaller opening
the side of the opening
the overall darkroom done.
lastly, i realised that the air flow wasn’t that good so i detached a ventilation fan from my house and attached it onto the dark room.
The ventilation fan from my house
attached onto the structure of the darkroom with screws.
and the cardboard was cutted out
cardboard were added to reduce lightleaks.
And the dark room was done!!!
next post will be the final post for the Analog submission for this project.
I think that Candles are really interesting, not only that they are visually appealing to watch as an therapeutic experience, they also produces smell depending on the nature of the candle, even extinguishing a candle produces a different smell. In short, a candle will utilize 3 out of the traditional five external senses which are sight, smell, touch but not hear and taste.
There are always meaning to everything and many objects have different meaning depending on the cultural context of the objects, However, candle have similar meaning across the globe as the candle symbolizes light in the darkness of life especially individual life, illlumination; it is the symbol of holy illumination of the spirit of truth.
There are festivals among different cultures around the world which uses candles as part of the “rituals”
Judaism – Hanukah, the ‘Festival of Lights’- a candle is lit for each of the 8 nights. Used to ward off evil spirits, life safe as long as candle burns
Hindu – Deepavali, spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair.
Western Christian – Halloween, candles were carried from eleven til midnight, if the candle went out it was an evil omen, if it didn’t it meant one year free from witchcraft.
Mahayana Buddhism – the lighting of a candle or an oil lamp represents the light of wisdom illuminating the darkness of ignorance.
“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the single candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared”
Main Idea
I want to play with the idea of Light and darkness which is the most common way to depict a candle, however the Project should incorporate a sense of aesthetic and should look nice and pleasant (Opinions on the matter vary from person to person) especially in the analogue stage.
To be able to flash, open Betaflight home page and install the 2 driver software/updates:
zadig-2.3
CP210x_Universal_Windows_Driver
update both driver to WinUSB (v6.1.7600.16385) in Zadig
then load the firmware (Betaflight F4 V2.0) to the drone by holding the bootloader button on the drone, plug in the micro usb, then flash the firmware into the flight controller, all while holding the bootloader button on the drone.
if unable to connect to the betaflight after flashing, it meant that the driver is in the wrong setting, follow this tutorial to change the device driver to “Microsoft USB serial port”
after that, reconnect the drone to beta flight and it should connect.
If the Throttle and is reversed(up is lower value and vice versa), simply open the battery cover of the controller and push the channel 3 switch up.
First and foremost, I think that Rose Bond and Matt Adams live by a different set of ideology whereby their project stemmed from.
Rose Bond
Throughout Rose Bond’s career path, she seemed to be focused on one main element which is the projection of animations, since 1982, her major work was animation and since then, she never left that field until now. We could clearly see the progression of technology within her work as she started out painting on 16mm clear film using vibrant color and it was done frame by frame painstakingly, I was really impressed with hard work of her work as I recently started to tryout doing animation to incorporate into my work which was done digitally that was so much easier than physically painting onto a small film, it was however, still tedious and this was the result that I’ve got from many hours of work.
Therefore I really admire Rose Bond’s passion and perseverance for doing such complex and long animation on a small film. As the time goes by, she shifted to digital animation and along with the support of better projectors, she could produce a larger, more vibrant piece of work onto building to catch the passerby’s attention, which I think is really effective as a form of art.
Matt Adams/Blast Theory
In Matt Adams work, I was more impressed by various field of technology Blast Theory used in their work, there was a high level of technological engineering required to complete each work and I was amazed by how every details worked together, it seemed that their research done and planning was superbly executed and there must be many contingency planned before the actual execution to make sure that every work flows like how it should be expected, since their viewers is usually also the participant, it is really difficult to anticipate what will they do, and as Matt Adam said:
“There will always be people trying to break your game”
yes, no matter how well the project was made, there will always be chance that something will go wrong, and this is why backup plan or recovery plan should be always thought before the execution as I think that a faulty installation which is obvious to most of the viewers, will not be a good installation at all. I got inspired in this by Matt Adams and I should really incorporate contingency plan during my planning stage for FYP so that I could be prepared if something goes wrong or spoils, it should be able to be repaired during the show. *Note to self – Include Maintenance and Recovery in Project Planning for FYP*
In Every of Blast Theory’s work, I was awed by how every project seemed simple to the eye of the viewer/participant but the work done to put these “seemingly simple” systems was so well thought, like Karen for example, as a user, it seemed really easy to navigate around the story just by clicking and especially from the start, the reaction of Karen was expected, but like as Matt Adam said, as the story progresses, Karen would bring back the choice made from the past which will surprise the user when they were caught off guard and this was also used in Can You See Me Now? whereby the user was supposed to put their username as someone whom they hadn’t see for a long time and while they play their game and forgotten about it, the “catcher” of the game will called their name(which was their friend’s name) and the player will be caught off guard by having the name appearing suddenly in which reminds of their friend. Such small task like inputting information into the system could be used in such a way, the thought placed into every small details was what made the project great when build on a fully functioning technological system, in short, the technological system is the base structure of the skyscraper, and the height of the skyscraper will depend on these well thought details.
In Conclusion
I think that Rose Bond and Matt Adams/Blast Theory was the type of artist that I mentioned in my first FYP post,
Rose bond is those artist that knew what she like, locking into just doing related project and tried to master the craft of animation and projection mapping.
Matt Adams/Blast Theory is those artist whom ventured into an unexplored territory, doing something new every time just wanting to see how much boundary(social and technologically) they could push.
If I were to choose my future, both artist is great and it’s only my preference, but I would like to become more like Matt Adams than Rose Bond as I think I would be really bored to do similar things for many years and also I really like to explore stuffs on my own.
I personally think that this is a really good read and it seemed to me that Kim Goodwin was writing from the point of view of a designer within a product design company(product could be tangible(physical product) or intangible(service or digital product). As in the corporate world, there will always be a team of people weather big or small, who fulfills the different role within the project like designer, engineer, marketing and so on, this information about designing human-centered product within the ecosystem of structured company would be really useful when we graduate and step into the real world. As of for now, we not only have to understand the role of the designer(which was covered in this reading), we too, must learn everything from the engineering(the coding/construction) to marketing (pitching/selling the idea) prospect that will lead to the completion of a project.
The Design Process:
In terms of project planning and management, I partly agree with the chart which the book is focusing on, the “Process”:
This chart seemed really logical, but I think that in real life designing situation, the research and project should be happening simultaneously.
I drew this chart as I personally think that it would be rather inefficient if we were to plan a project before doing any research regarding it, normally during research, there would changes made to the project which will drastically change the planning of the project or even scraping the idea due to really similar product already existing in the market without prior researches. This is why, I think that the safer way is to research and plan simultaneously to avoid wasting time, effort and resources.( As mentioned in the reading – Project Planning is happening “Before dedicating resources to a project”.)
Research, the good old research.
I always think that research plays the greatest part into designing,
“To solve a problem, you must first understand it. Good research helps you make the best product definition and design decision later on.”
I totally agree with this sentence as a research well done will not only help the designer to understand the situation better, it will also help them to understand what resources is available to them which will help them to complete the work in a more efficient manner. For example, sometimes, outsourcing the productions of parts might be of a better quality at cheaper price and faster than to produce them in house within a certain company, and this information could be found during the research.
In Summary
I really think that this will be a good guidance to creating a human-centered product or services if I am to read the whole book, by reading this chapter, it gave me the rough idea of how to plan for the planning process, as I did not previously know that we were supposed to think about implementation of support to our project/product which we are making.
When I was reading the Principles, it mentioned that “Does it help your user to accomplish their goals?” and ” Will it help the users minimize their work?” as the evaluation of weather a supposed principle is both true and applicable to the problem in front of you, these evaluations are indeed wonderful, however, not all products and service were designed with maximizing user’s convenience in mind, how about in situation where the customer is not the user, do we take the end user or the one who is paying the bill into the consideration?
In the situation of selling service as products, having the best service(above user’s expectation) at the reasonable price would greatly increase the perceived value and customer’s loyalty to an extend, and so is a good marketing strategy. If a good marketing strategy is being considered during the planning phase but not as an after thought (like now we have a good product, but how do we sell it?), could the marketing strategy be seen as the product itself?
I found the Thoughtful Interaction Design really enriching and there were many useful ideas which I could learn from. Although Lowgren was specifically mentioning about the topic revolving “Designing digital artifact”, like he mentioned:
“Interaction design refers to the process that is arranged within existing resource constrains to create, shape, and decide all use-oriented qualities (structural, functional, ethical, and aesthetic) of a digital artifact for one or for many clients.”
Thoughtful Interaction Design?
Good Design?
I did some research about Jonas Lowgren and his main area of expertise includes collaborative media, interactive visualization and the design theory of digital materials. He focuses on the digital world and “design” to him is very different from how I interpret it. He places huge emphasis on the “digital artifacts” while I am for the inclusion of more than just that. I think that his concept of thoughtful interaction design could definitely transverse from the idea of just within the digital world into the physical world because not only do we interact with the “digital artifacts”, we also interact with the “physical artifacts”, take for example, a normal physical door. By not placing a door handle on the top corner of a two meters tall door, it might seemed commonsensical, but that is “Thoughtful Interaction Design” to me.
I think that for an artifact(digital or physical) to be an amazingly-thoughtful-interaction-designed, it has to be design with the consideration of all targeted user, how and where will they use the artifact, and account for the safety while fulfilling the expectation of the users, the specification of the client, and when it goes above these basic of an artifact, it has to inspire other designers to follow or “copy” the system or the ideology behind it while simultaneously, the original designer/company would improve the existing design and strife for a better version because nothing is really perfect,
Working with design means that you continuously need to define and redefine what you think of as good design. It is a never-ending process of thoughtful reflections.
And when something was brilliantly designed, not only the customer wants it, the competitors(existing or potential) would want it too.
The iPod Generation 2
I think that the iPod classic 2nd generation from 2002 was brilliantly designed in the aspect of thoughtful interaction design, it had also changed people’s life drastically, even though it was not the pioneer of the iPod series, nor the one that made the biggest leap in sales, I personally think that the 2nd generation iPod classic was the breakthrough within the realm of interaction design, not forgetting that there were many iPod generations to come after the 2nd, each had their multiple system updates and then upgraded to the next generation and then came iPod touch, which gradually evolves to the latest iPhone X. (Just to be clear, I am definitely not a supporter of Apple and even dislike it as a brand, but their product marketing and system design sure is amazing.)
The biggest change that apple made from the generation 1 to generation 2 was the inclusion of Windows system for syncing the songs from iTunes, as the biggest downfall for generation 1 was that Apple forces the user to be running an Apple computer system to be able to use the iPod, this resulted in the potential user who doesn’t have an Apple computer to be excluded. In Generation 2, Apple included the Musicmatch Jukebox to manage the user’s music library and transfer music to the iPod which made generation 2 the first iPod for Windows.
I always think that the ipod were magical in a sense that the circular touch-sensitive wheel, these were really the thoughtful interaction design that was mentioned in Lowgren’s book:
Design work is given form and structure by designer’s own thought, consideration and actions.
These circular touch-sensitive wheel was designed in the consideration as of how they marketed the iPod: to”put 1,000 songs in your pocket.”(which was really ground breaking during that time). The designer took the system advantage(also the limitation) into consideration… Imagine that the iPod does not have the circular wheel for the user to scroll through the song list, and the user did have 1,000 songs, how long or how tedious would it take to click the down button or the next button to go to the 499th song in the list?
With the circular wheel, the user could easily scroll through the list at great speed by spinning the wheel.
The whole form and aesthetics, material used, hardware, software, even till packaging, was well thought of for the optimal user experience, the size is just right to be carried around in the pocket of jeans (target audience demographics placed into consideration), the placement of the screen and the directions was ergonomically constructed so that user could use it with single hand operation, back light of screen vs battery life were well balanced to have good visibility and above average battery life so that user could use the iPod wherever they go and it should last long enough until the user could charge it(understanding the target user). Every aspect of the iPod was efficiently designed to suit their target audience. And by watching the advertisement from that time, it is rather clear who the target audience was.
and then came this:
Young active hipster.
In Conclusion.
I think that through the eleven pages of reading, this quote impacted me the most as a designing student,
“We are all living in a world almost completely artificial and designed, and every new addition, every new design adding to this world has an impact on how we experience the whole”
(I like how it goes from a designer’s perspective to a user’s perspective here)
“Design is about shaping the world we live in by creating the conditions” and “it means that you influence people’s work, leisure, and everyday life.” It let me realize that we are actually living in a world that is partially ran by designer, every thing we saw, every thing we touched, was designed by someone at some point of time. We, the designers in making, may hold the power to change the everyday life of the people we’ve never seen in our life.
Bike sharing had been in Singapore for almost a year and it is rather successful (transportation for us wise, not in business or government policy) and we could virtually find these bikes anywhere and everywhere (like in the drain, read: man throw ofo bike into canal)
There are 3 major bike sharing company running in Singapore, namely OBike, MoBike and OFO, and out of the 3, OFO is in striking yellow and would be nice in contrasting to most background and so we decided to use OFO for this work! (not because OFO was free from Monday 22nd January to Sunday 4th February, we would definitely pay if we have to. Really.)
During our first session of mOFOs we shifted bikes to create a roadblock in a void deck, by doing so, we had many curious passerby coming to us and asked why are we blocking the path? and we told them that we will remove the Ofos and they are like “ohhhhhh ok”. One even took the pictures of the bike too! she must’ve like our installation and think its really organized and definitely did not think about complaining us…
And on our second session of mOFOs, we went to Chinese gardens and shifted the bicycles around, Senior Nat saw us during his MRT ride and he alighted the train and helped us to carry the bicycles. Thank you again Nat! =D
at the end of the day, we got photos taken by random passerby and it was uploaded onto Reddit Singapore… well… that’s free publication!
again, I had progressed much further since that post, mainly in designing the workable electrical and mechanical system that could fit into the Telephone and to write the Arduino code up.
First, lets start with the Final Video!
Back into the Process
Since the previous post which I’ve roughly did the belt system that drives the music card into the laser reader, I had added the motor to the system and tried it, at this point, it seemed to work as I thought all I need was to slow the motor down and it will be alright.
First I sawed the phone to remove the material for me to cut them easily later
and slowly, I cut them up
after chipping the plastic off, i constantly checked the dimension of it and trimmed a little at a time to prevent having a larger hole than I needed.
With this hole, I could finally see how it is looking internally and if there are any parts i made which was too tall in the case.
After I cut the hole, I proceed to modelling the card slot and i took inspiration from the ATM just to have the user to have something they’ve experienced and know how to put the Music Card in without instructing them, since subconsciously, I assumed that they interacted with a ATM at some point in their life.
This is the inspiration that I took from
I used Tinkercad to modeled it and the cube like doesnt look like ATM card slot.
so i tried to use curve lines, and MANNNN Tinkercad was not meant to be used this way!! these angles and tilts of a pipe line was only done by brute force trail and error.
Version 1 on the left and Version 2 on the right.
After the modelling which i am really happy with, I proceed to print it.
I changed filament to clear filament to print the card slot which was modeled according to the ATM
Half way printing, its looking really good
test of size with the music cards.
and i tested by plugging in one green LED in it and MANNNNNN IT LOOK SO MUCH NICER THAN I EXPECTED!! I WAS IMPRESSED.
Since it was looking good, I went ahead and make a nicer LED system for it by soldering 4 LED(3 on the bottom and one for the top).
I used the flat and clear when Unlit Green LED so that i could stuck it in the shell on top.
and I soldered the 3 on the bottom and tested it out.
placing it in to see the effect again.
The light was too glaring so I sticked white electrical tape to diffuse the LED to make sure that they glow nicely.
and this is how the system would work.
How the phone should look
Next, I Epoxyed the speaker onto the bottom of the front belt drive since there is already a hole in the bottom shell for the speaker.
This is the DC motor driver which is used to run the 2 DC motor in the system.
and I soldered the pins too.
I thought I woundn’t need to solder this again… but… i happened to solder this for the 4th times..
I extended the wires and used thinner and softer wires so aid me in the messy wiring withing the telephone afterwards.
this is the wires for only the photoresistors.
and I soldered the relays which control the 14 laser diodes and the 4 Green LED lights which runs on 2 AA battery to reduce the load on my arduino and to make sure the laser and LED have a stable current flow.
It was at this point then I realized that if i reduce the speed of my DC motor to the speed of the music, I wont have enough torque to pull the card in..
After an afternoon of panicking and finding alternative motor or even thinking to redesigning my whole belt system….
So to solve this problem, I tried to get the medium speed which is faster than what the song should be and will stuck about 30% of the time and removed the buttons (which detects card when user insert into it that trigger the motor to turn the belt.) that caused more friction. And I also jump start the motor by making it to spin at full speed for half a second to break the initial force required when the motor is starting.
The messy configuration, components and wirings.
It took me some time to sort out these messy wiring and make sure that none of the wires interfere with the track that the Music card is going through.
The overall layout before the mp3decoder mount was printed and installed.
The relay which controls the LED and 14 laser diodes, it work as a ground for other buttons to do the pulldown resistor.
the only part in the whole system that was not soldered was the connection to the Arduino Mega as I intend to reuse it in the future.
Closeup of the 14 Laser Diodes.
The soldered joint of the DC motor.
I’ve epoxyed the nuts of all the wheels for the belt drive to make sure they stay where they should be and don’t unscrew/tighten themselves.
I also Epoxyed the relay onto the case of the AA battery to make sure nothing is loose in the case.
Soldered connection from the phone coil wire to the 8 Ohm 0.5 Watt speaker.
I also Hot-glued four big nuts in the phone to increase it’s weight to make sure that when the phone is in the place, it is heavy enough to press the button down.
the assembled phone
after the MP3decoder mount was modeled and printed, it looks quite good overall!
I used this 400 Ohm resistor to reduce the volume of the tune when playing the music card.
And added a relay that cut the power of the MP3 Decoder since I am not able to control it digitally, the only way was to let it play until it is the start of the next track and cut off the power to stop the voice track. it also switches the circuit of the phone from the MP3 Decoder to the Arduino pin at the same time.
Some may wonder how did I make the Music Card..
I copied a few from online like Demons by Imagine Dragons, Harrypotter’s Hedwig Theme, and Pokemon Theme song, These were labeled on the card and those that weren’t labeled was What I composed myself. Since I have no music background, I did it by trial and error to give it a tune.
This was screen recorded when I tried to compose my 4th tune for this project:
after this was completed, I screen shot it and import into Illustrator to trace it into the Card layout which I made.
AND how about the voice command in 7 different accent?
well, this is relatively simple, just type whatever I want on Webbased Text to speech reader and have it read it out in different accent and edit them in premiere pro to cut them up to the exact same length(9 seconds) and put them into the SD card within the Obseleting Instrument’s MP3 Decoder.
Why did I made it to speak different accent? It was to engage the user and make them feel like there was really life in the system where they called/receive call from a real person, like if they discussed with their friend and their friend said that there was a Indian accent while what they heard was the British accent, they might want to try Obseleting Instrument for a few more time. The accent there is there to add variables in the system.
In Conclusion
Throughout this Project, I’ve learnt many things like how to model objects in Tinkercad and make measurements properly, there are always failures in everything that I modeled before it works, and this is why 3D printing is a good prototype process where I printed it out and tested it to know if it work or not, if it doesnt, I will shave off some piece to see if it fits, if it does, I will make new measurements for the edited model.
Also, to have a Telephone case in the start and scale everything into the Telephone case was really a challenge especially at the start when I could not measure how big the internal was and could only make a guess and print some test print to try it out.
In this project, I realized that if I were to do a project that require multiple fields of knowledge like mechanical and electrical, It was better if I did not know how hard it will be, if I were to know that every part of the project will be something that I don’t know, I will be too afraid to jump into this project. I did something, realized that it doesn’t work and find solution to that single problem and proceed to work on the project and faced another problem, solving and learning one problem at a time lead me to the completion of the project.
Now that I had completed the project and looking back. Obseleting Instrument is really a complicated project as a whole, but thinking about it, I am just putting many small system into one project- like using one laser diode and a photo resistor as a switch, playing a tune when triggered, a physical button to sense if the phone was picked up, using a relay to control circuits of different voltage, running two DC motor at the same time and so on… Obseleting Instrument is just a collection of small systems, which I personally thinks was what made my journey of doing this project really interesting because I explored the basics of these components and learnt a whole lot through it.
Continue from my part 4 of this project updates, This is the final part which leads to the completion and is rather long as many things from getting the power supply, modelling, testing, painting, assembling to coding had been done in the past 2 weeks.
First, the final video of The Curious & Timid Turtle.
And then, into the process….
NEW POWER SUPPLY!!!
At the end of last post, I was waiting for the power supply to reach and it did during these 2 weeks so I’ve tested it out, The one that I bought is a AC-DC converter at 6V 20A when all I needed was 6V 8A, i decided to buy the higher Amp one just if i need more amp in the future, and I could also share the supply to my Interactive device project during the End of sem show.I did some wiring afterwards.
Since the last post that I’ve decided to change the system in the legs to save space and shorten the overall length by stacking a smaller MG90S on the MG966R to act as a lever system to pull control the legs. After testing this system out and seemed to be working, I merged it with the turtle leg that I’ve modeled in Zbrush, I don’t know about Zbrush before this project and it tool a long time just to model the shell, the legs and the feet.
Backleg model
Backleg model before final
Frontleg model
Frontleg model before final.
I merged the leg with the previous test “rod-like” leg because I’ve already gotten the dimension in there so i just need to scale the Zbrush modeled leg accordingly to fit the “rod-like” leg.
changing of the entire base layout to reduce size and increase EFFICIENCY for the back legs.
At this point, I was wondering if I should change the MG966R(metal gears) into SG-5010(plastic gears) due to weight issue I might face later after adding the shell and so on, so I weigh the motors and decided that I should change the back leg to SG5010(but I changed it back to MG966R one day before submission due to the internal gears got loose in SG5010)
MG966R is 54g
SG5010 is 44g, the difference is 10g so by switching 2 motor, I could save 20g of weight in my system. and so I did.
Major changes were made for whole layout of the base due to various reasons – the backleg will move differently from the front and since my project is basically a turtle with round shell instead of a flat one, it made more sense to use a smaller but higher layout rather than a flatter and wider one to make use of all the space within the shell.
This was the previous layout(Version 4) which made the whole shell really flat and big
and this is Version 5(left) and Version 6(right) which I stacked the servo for the back leg on the shoulder servo of the front leg.
Since my Zbrush was cracked, it crash rather often and I did the same thing over and over if I forgot to save frequently and hence it took quite long to model anything, but well~~
The head started off as a sphere
and tried to model it as close as the turtle head as possible.
and some general shape edit
slowly, I edited it to look like a reptilian head, and instead of getting the real look of the eye, I’ve decided to enlarge the eye to give my turtle a cute look (and because the eyelid looks too hard to model).,
As for the shell… it took so much time and crashes to get it right, because the shell cannot be too thin(unable to print later) and cant be too thick (too heavy) and I cant find a function that could allow me to see the thickness (like reduce opacity of the material to see through), so everytime to check the thickness, I have to export into STL, and import into Tinkercad to check the thickness.
This is like the version 11 of the shell.
I used this image as the sample for my shell pattern
topview when I marked the turtle pattern onto the shell
and i further carve the pattern out.
the rim of the shell i did without any reference and I marked it out
and carved into it.
Everytime I made major changes to the shell, I’ll have to import to Tinkercad to check the thickness and shape.
this was almost the final shell before splitting the shell for printing.
I split the shell top(transparent) and bottom(Pink) in Zbrush because its following the shape of the pattern of the shell, and the top half into 2 in Tinkercad as a straight cut will ease my printing later. I also added 4 holes that allow me to reassemble them using bolt and nuts later.
The comparison of V4 base with V6 base. V6 is much shorter at 150% higher,
The white one was Version5 which was a test print that I realized that the motor is unable to be fitted into it so I cut some material off and remeasured.
the front of the base is a liner bearing that i could slide the rod for the head.
I sprayed the overall colour of the turtle with Tamiya Acrylic paint.
halfway through the spraying, I remembered that I need to epoxy the two pieces of the shell together first.
and so I epoxy it 3 times and sand off the extra epoxy to hide the glue line by a bit.
although it is still visible, I think it is a reasonable standard since I will be painting it further with darker color afterwards which will hide the glue line more.
and i masked the eye using tape for me to spray it black and glossy
and i carefully cut out the tape in the shape of the eye.
After this, I added a few lines of code to substitute the button pressed with sound sensor to make the turtle more intractable and a few more actions that made it more timid looking (head peeking out to check the environment before the whole body come out.)
In conclusion:
Overall, I really liked this project although I kind of regretted trying to make a turtle during the process because the shell is giving a lot of layout and movability problem made me kept thinking that if I were to make something without shell, it will be so much easier, but the reason that I first wanted to make a turtle is the best is because the shell naturally hide all components that break the user’s perception that this is a robot and a turtle is my spiritual animal, now that I finished the project, I am really glad that I sticked to my initial idea of making a turtle and persevere through all the problems I faced(mainly hardware and mechanical problems which I changed my system and design so many times.).
With more time, I am sure that I could code the turtle be able to be scare back into the shell by another sudden loud noise – I tried to change the delay in my code to Millis multiple times and it do every action in the sequence twice so I sticked to using delay for now, which disabled me to write the activation code for using the sound as a trigger since it is in a delay loop. But, it looked really nice for now even if there is only one sequence of movement and I am glad that people were thinking that the turtle is cute when they saw it.
The file size of this presentation was too large to be uploaded so I’ve screen recorded the presentation and uploaded it to youtube.
I’ve chose to narrow down my scope to just Unconventional Musical Instruments mainly because it will be more interesting and fits the time limit nicely.
although it seemed really easy, but for a first timer, it took some time away from me.
Team mOfos Signing out.
This is a 8 Ohm 0.5watt speaker that will be plugged directly into the Arduino.
I also Epoxyed the 4 LED into the card slot to prevent them from sliding around.
And then I found that I have a longer DC motor with metal gears built into it and i tried to figure our if I can incorporate this gear box into my current system, which is also rather impossible as the ratio for this gear box is about 1:45. when I only need about 1:5 to 1:8. if i use this, I will have the belt driver running too slow.
same goes for this, but this is 1:250… even slower.
after trying out the workable speed of sound and getting stuck by removing the buttons.
to make use of the original button on the phone, I’ve figured that the 12 buttons runs on 2 different circuit which I could simply solder these number together and make all the 12 buttons into one button, so nomatter which buttons the user pressed, it will be registered as one button pressed.
Because I cut off the Redial button on the phone to make space for my belt driver system, I epoxyed the Redial button back to the case as there are no PCB supporting it.
Laser raster and cut in school on 2mm acrylic.
I really like the Japanese and Korean accent, its really funny!
I am really glad that this many piece worked well together and this was the biggest challenge.. since there are so many components working together (electrical and mechanical), even if one of the parts failed, it would not work as well as it is now. So I considered myself really lucky that the parts happened to work well even when there are misalignment everywhere.
I did some wiring afterwards.
And after the wiring, I did power test, it could easily run 8 servos simultaneously with nothing overheating. which is a great news for me!
This was quite the final base before I added the mount for the small backleg servo and the servo driver mount which will be attached it using screws.
Nothing is more satisfying in removing the support in one whole chunk(I did alot of cutting before this video so I can pluck out in one piece.)
this is the liner slider an an aluminium rod for the head system.
testing out of the head slider and to mark the length I need it to move and cut.
The mechanism to slide the head that I will use after cutting the rod to almost the size I need.
this is the final mechanism for the head after I printed a small piece to prevent the wire from tilting too much when pushing the rod.
the head could be push and pull out nicely even before adding the string to control the tilt of the head.
metal rod were epoxyed into the head to tie the elastic thread to control the tile of the head.
The final test of the turtle before I finally started coding it. The head uses elastic thread because it will go forward and retract, since I dont want anything to be loose and might interfere with the shoulder servo motor, I decided to use elastic thread so that the thread wont be loose when the head is retracted.
This is the almost completed sequence of action,the turtle’s movement is quite restricted due to the shell and the back leg is unable to push the turtle forward because of the shell’s restriction as well as the weaker servo(MG90S) which is responsible for the forward and backward thrust, while the MG966R is strong enough to lift the turtle up, so the turtle could do movements up and down but not walk.
This was what made into my final turtle with many component being edited into the next version.