Monday, November 30, 2009

The Arduino... is a bar?

This is an interesting article... It was featured on core77 and details the creation and concept behind the all important Arduino, a resource which has been vital to the innovative spirit of our class. Among the interesting points in the article are that the concept of the Arduino micro controller was developed specifically for design students and that the name itself, 'Arduino' comes from a local watering hole frequented by the developers...

check it out at:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574559960271468066.html

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

its about that time...



I worked on constructing our model out of the components that were laser cut out. I used foam core in the place of the aluminum, and a scrap piece of ply in place of the blind...


On a good note though, I have figured out a way to attach our blinds to the servo. I went to the hardware store and looked around for an hour or so and found a piece of hardware that looks like the funky cousin of a lock washer. I also found the screws that will fit into the interior of the servo shaft. and when you add up those to things with a cheap aluminum profile you get what you see in the picture above. when the washer (which has little teeth in it) is placed in between the aluminum and servo it prevent any sliding because of its teeth, and creates a nice connection between the two.

There are several problems with it that need to be addressed tomorrow before we move on with the rest of the modules. We also need to secure our order of aluminum and some more cast acrylic (really soon)

There is an interesting thing about the nature of this progress. It has been democratic in terms of design; everyone has something to say in terms of why something should not be done a certain way, which makes for a very long design process. And yet it hasn't really been democratic in terms of bringing the design into fruition. Frustrating to say the least.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The Smartsurface Conundrum

I think that our discussion with Michelle Addington made for one of the best discussions of my senior year. In part, I think that this is because the discussion exposed many broader implications about collaboration and the nature of progress that are extremely relevant us as students right now, as we are all bound for “real world” employment next year and must integrate ourselves into a company consisting of people educated in various disciplines.

I think that the most interesting aspect to the discussion was the exposure of the conundrum of this Smartsurfaces class, which is the troubling relationship between the ‘subject matter’ of this class and its ‘educational content’. I would broadly classify the subject matter of this class as heliotropism. I think that the ‘educational content’ of this class is inter-disciplinary collaboration, or rather the actual process of collaboration that takes place in each group’s quest to conceptualize the final project and bring it to fruition.

Of course, as we have all discovered in our group projects, these two variables combine to make for a roller coaster of excitement, progress, creativity, and frustration.

So, in one respect we (the students) have the impression that the criteria for judging the project’s success lies in the impressiveness of our end product, however, I think that the real criteria for judging success might actually lie in how we came to improve our collaborative approach throughout the project.

In short I would almost be more comfortable with struggling and perhaps failing to produce the “product” if I am able to come to terms with the difficulties of interdisciplinary collaboration. In this regard I personally feel that the most valuable “product” of this class is not the impressiveness and installation of our concept and project, but the gained ability to interact with others to create pertinent concepts and bring them to fruition.

Interestingly, the criteria by which people outside of this class will judge its success and value (including those university officials responsible for funding the future of the class) will be the impressiveness of end product and the impact that our projects will make on them within the gallery installation, and not the more valuable aspect of each project which is the process by which we interacted to actually create them.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Status Quo

Now that our team has a clearer idea of our project, we have sub-divided our members into two smaller groups in an effort to make more progress. One group is focusing on primarily on the programming aspect of the project. The other sub-group is working on the mechanism and initial prototype.

The prototype subgroup consists of myself, Michael, Josiah and Brieana. We have simplified our objectives for the first prototype to mainly address the general construction of the support structure that houses our servos, wires, and LEDs, and the "flaps"or "blinds" that will be controlling the amount of light allowed to enter our desired space. We will be utilizing the CNC routers to route out our components from plywood. Once assembled we will link up with the programming group to hook up are sensor arrays and test the system.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Thoughts on progress

I think that the guest Eugene Shteyn's visit was a positive one for everyone in the class. As we all realized, it helped flesh out the central problems and issues with our projects. In my group specifically our group began to question the very basic elements of our idea. The subject of providing shade was questioned, along with other issues like installation logistics and mechanics. Some of these issues, like the mechanical aspect of our project, were inevitably going to be addressed in the main stretch of our project. Nonetheless, I think normal issues like these, coupled with the rest seamed to scare many teamates away from the planned trajectory ouf our project.

Since the last class we have refocused our efforts on a somewhat simpler task and idea. I think there is something to be said for taking a smaller task and executing it extremely well. I am slightly worried however, at the general lack of enthusiasim that seems to be plaguing everyone as of late...