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shuang's itp jorney
welcome to my chelsea hotel
chelsea is a name given by naive shuang
hope you enjoy your stay
class five - prototyping and documentation
mar 15th
After posting so many virtual prep posts on this project, I’m presenting the final product and its physical preparation! To find the concept design and the ideation, check previous posts.
I have to say: I think my project is the most direct reflection of the class title – lights and controls.
I have been telling people that the project is actually extremely simple because there are only simple circuits. What I learned later is that repetition of simple circuits could be catastrophic in combination with enclosures design. Therefore, I’m extremely proud of the result and its tidiness.
Wiring:
Of course, I did not test out everything on a breadboard because what could go wrong?! This is the single light bulb test I did at the early stage of the design. The following is the circuit test and semantics that turned out to be necessary.
From this project, I found out that I have a bad habit of wiring the switch wrong. I suffered from that habit. The above is one of the few times I have tried things out on a breadboard and wired them correctly. The right is one of the early stages of testing that involves one bulb and one switch.
What also stirred inaccurately in the process is the hundreds of soldering spots that I had to hand-solder in the tiny space that was available for the microcontroller. On the left and below shown are some representations of the situations that I was dealing with. During the time, the multimeter was my best friend and on my lap the whole time. A note to self, do not use the jumper wire for soldering and check the ground connection too even if you thought one solder won’t be the problem. (As you can see - the green middle wire - I used a jumper wire for ground connection to save myself from a header soldering pain, but it didn't end well.)
The below are how the wiring looks at the end. I’m hoping to look into PCB designs in the future because this is not how I envision this simple toy should be.
The fabrication:
For the obvious reasons shown above, I had to increase the height of the original prototype. I ended up keeping the layout shown on the prototype (I adjusted the intervals between the toggles and the bulbs because they were too close for the washer to fit.
Though I thought about sticking with cardboard for the entire enclosure, the prototype didn’t even last for more than a week before the edge started to be eaten up. Naturally, I used a hard board for the curved edge. I also adapted the clear acrylic baking for both the top and the bottom because:
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it was available for me
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it’s sturdier than hardboard, and I tried bending acrylics too (with the cut + heat gun) no luck
class four - final ideation presentation
feb 22nd
I have roughly talked about this idea in the previous post. The link is the deck for the proposal. Expand to see the full design.
Having fun with the small tinkering design, I have gathered most of the material I will be needing for this project.
There are a lot of things I need to think of before putting them into a soldered circuit.
Check out these slides to see the details.
class three - final proposal
feb 15th
I am a bit stuck on the ideation. I am quite fascinated by the idea of a handheld-sized device that plays around with lights.
I have a long personal history with tic tac toe. I have made other objects that can be construed as a tic tac toe device. I am intrigued by the idea of a simple form of chess between two minds as well as the competing relationship for entertainment.
This project could potentially be fully analog because of its simplicity while - but for the same reason - I am not completely set to mind with this idea.
class two
feb 8th
The left larger image is the larger image that's under the white/yellow residential lamp.
The right 6 pannels are them covering the lamp by order. As suspected, the light color will make the white paper looks comparatively close to such colored paper.
Under the red light and orange light, the pink, red, orange, yellow all look similar. My theory is that the four all contain red pigments of some sort that reflects off the lights.
I have not been able to create the IV-4 in real life because of the limit in the paper selection and gel selection, but this is what I tried in p5. The squares have only two different colors, but for the human eye, the red on the bottom left and the green on the top right are brighter than the other two relatively speaking. I have also tried with circle and the result becomes less obvious.
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class one
class one
jan 30th
I was observing cooking stoves the other day.
I remembered the ones at my childhood homes were not always effective.
They wouldn't always turn on after the continuous clicks.
For many times, I imagined enough gas had come out, and I blew up the house.
So when they eventually did, it always is a moment of relief and an end of suspensions.
The sentiments in me made those final lighting moments were so glorious, grandiloquent, and sparkling. The small device I concocted this week is meant to capture such nuanced enlightenment.
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