blog

This project is to combine with ICM final which shows Bellagio fountain water animation through which live video can be seen. The concept is to make physical interface of writing hand to write out the word while Bellagio fountain water animation plays on the screen when the light is turned off. The physical mechanical hand idea came from Arthur Ganson’s work called “Faster”. When the light is turned on everything stops leaving the mechanical hand written word on the paper.

I came up with using lab shop materials for the project. At first I thought about using clay for the wheel that controls the writing of the hand. Then I realized it was impossible to sculpt the clay in a way that hand writes any word so I decided to make hand scribble instead. I made a hand by stuffing plastic wrap inside rubber glove. I crazy glued and used wire to attach pen to hand. Helping hands I got from the lab shop helped the adjustment of hand and the wheel. I placed them on the top of the unused box. I realized then that I don’t need to use clay for the wheel but I can use servo motor to make hand writing jumpy so it looks like it’s writing. I secured writing hand and servomotor on the box by using wires and making a hole in the box. I placed paper underneath the hand and realized that paper needs to move horizontally for hand to make continuous horizontal scribbles. I thought about placing two DC motors at both ends of paper so that paper would roll. It should roll at slow pace. Now came the programming part. I found an arduino code in the previous lab that controlled servo motor using photo sensor. Since that fit my purpose of turning on the mechanism of wiring when light is turned off I used this code while also adding code that controlled two DC motors.

Code

Despite many attempts to make it work, the motors either turned really fast and didn’t roll the paper continuously. I took out any extraneous materials that supported the paper but still motor wouldn’t control the rolling of paper. Servomotor worked when photo sensor was used. It made tick tack movement as it moved the hand. I asked many people regarding DC motor rolling paper issue but they were either too occupied with their own work to put full attention on my work. So I went on trying to solve the problem by myself but I couldn’t find anything wrong with the rolling paper mechanism, circuit, or the code. I changed circuit several time because I thought 5V was too weak for 3 motors. The circuit was made so that arduino board used 12V or 9V. The strength of motors became stronger but still the paper didn’t roll. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t think of any other way to make paper roll. Paper was light enough for motors to roll it over but it wouldn’t. It came to be very very frustrating thing because I couldn’t find a way to solve this problem which I didn’t know the cause of.

Then the final presentation day came when my project still had problems. After Greg’s comment, I tried to solve the problem after taking it home since floor was too busy with the show. I stared at it, looked at other codes, alternated circuits again but I got the same result. Hopefully I’ll come up with a way to solve it someday.

Use relay to convert 120VC to 5VC for small water fountain.

magnetic touch senor

stranded wire-great for flexibility. Twist it to fit it into breadboard hole. sauter the wires together.

Think about how you’re going to present it.

Tinker proxy-way to convert the serial. Used flash to animate butterflies

The stronger the wind blowing into the the instrument, the stronger the resolution gets

Document final project

Think about audience who are not in physical computing class when doing presentation. How do you describe ITP to strangers. Describe the process. Hard problems.

Photo sensor to detect light

Motor to rotate the shaped wheel

When photo sensor detects light motor starts to run(arduino) and water fountain animation on screen starts.(serial input is needed for processing)

This was a fun experiment using MIDI output box and analog and digital inputs to make sounds through Garageband. Because it was not clear in the lab instruction how to output the sound I spent some time figuring it out with other people. I found out later that I had to install MIDI output box drive in order for output box to work with computer and Arduino. I also found out that you have to open Garageband to play the sound. MIDI box alone cannot produce the sound output. So here are the results:

Playing sound and display of serial output

Using Potentiometer to control the pitch