Gratitude, post veneer warping

This is an interactive display that reflects and encourages gratitude. It is comprised of a wall-mounted wood panel, lit from behind. Capacitive touch sensing allows users to seed the panel with moments of gratitude that inspire later moments of contemplation for each other. Materials include laser cut pecan veneer, sanded opaque white acrylic, and warm white LEDs. Capacitive touch sensing is handled by the Arduino CapSense library, and TLC5940s drive the LEDs. Unfortunately, finding an adhesive compatible with both the paper-backed veneer and a plexi has been a struggle. As you can see in this image, although the veneer looked beautifully smooth at first, it has warped and come away from the backing in a few places. It’s likely that the only solution for this problem is to use an expoxy to coat the entire face, sealing the veneer and the plexi within. I’d like to stay away from that option, so I’m considering laser cutting a piece of MDF to match the veneer, and then using a layer of paper behind it to diffuse the light.

The user scenario goes something like this: while thinking of someone or something she is grateful for, the user touches the center of any spiral on the panel. A brief pulse of light will shine through the perforations to let her know her input has been noted. After a delay of several hours, a light will appear in the center of the same spiral. Slowly, the whole of the spiral will begin to glow, becoming brighter and brighter, inviting a user (the same user as before or another) to take a moment to contemplate someone or something he or she is grateful for (in my experience, contemplating one thing I am grateful for often reminds me of other reasons I feel gratitude). As the spiral begins to fade, the user has the opportunity to note another moment of gratitude by touching another spiral. In this way, I hope to allow multiple users to inspire a sense of gratitude in each other.

Inside the face of Gratitude (sensors/LED modules)

Arduino Duemilanoves and TLC5940s

First prototype of capacitive touch sensing module

Capacitive touch sensing

Update: SurveyMonkey closes surveys once they collect 100 responses, so I’ve created a second version. Please take the current version of the Arduino Lifespan survey if you haven’t chimed in regarding your Arduino usage habits yet.

Arduino Duemilanove

After some serious thought about my final project for If Products… I’ve decided to drop the modern heirlooms project. It’s just not well-defined enough to be successful during the short time span between now and the end of the semester. Instead, I’ll be performing a Life Cycle Assessment of the Arduino Duemilanove. From there, I’ll either compare it’s impact to other Arduino hardware or examine other materials from the basic kit we use for Introduction to Physical Computing. My hope is that by doing this research I’ll be able to identify where we have the greatest environmental impact while learning to prototype and, hopefully, where we might make some improvements. I’m using the Alpha version of Sustainable Minds, and so far it’s going really well. I’m looking forward to seeing what I learn. Right now I’m struggling with figuring out the hours of use for the Arduino; rather than applying the actual lifespan of the board I’m trying to gauge hours of use by an average ITP student.

Velas, glowing.

I need to add a layer behind the screen to diffuse the LEDs, but the glowing looks amazing in a darkened room.

This is a short summary presentation I made to accompany my final project for PComp and ICM. Please download the PowerPoint file in order to view this presentation as it is intended. Unfortunately, SlideShare does not support slide animations, and it has some problems with formatting.

I will upload images and code in the next few days.

Update: The first prototype of Velas is working, including a switch to segue from collecting the tug count to displaying the lights. The selection of which light families to display still isn’t random, but hopefully I’ll be able to get that working for next week.

Laser Cutting Preview

I also got the LED driver working the other day. Tomorrow evening I’ll be working on getting a group of LEDs to behave the way I’d like. Then I’ll work on getting multiple LED groups going.

I’ve been struggling with an appropriate input for this project, but earlier tonight I got an idea. I was walking through Chinatown, and I happened to notice a pile of wooden bead bracelets. I’m going to try threading beads on a stretch sensor and looping it like a bracelet so that each time the user tugs on the bracelet a light is triggered in the display.

Warm White LEDs

This week I’ve gotten help from lots of people. I met with Rory to talk about light sources, and he referred me to Bryan and Aly, who helped me figure out what kind of LED drivers to use in order to dim multiple LEDs in groups and pointed me to the Arduino library for the TLC5940. Tom Gerhardt helped me narrow down my light source to warm white LEDs (rather than incandescent bulbs or RGB LEDs) and suggested I talk to Metropolitan Lumber about veneer possibilities. Hyeki answered my questions about laser cutting and assured me that it’s a reasonable idea even though I’ve never done any projects with it before, and Peter Esveld gave me a quick overview of using Illustrator, since I’ll need to submit my design for cutting as an Illustrator file. Today and tomorrow I’m working on the design of the front panel and sorting out the pseudocode, this weekend I hope to get the lights working, and I’ll add the input next week. My hope is to have all of the parts working before the Thanksgiving holiday and then polish my documentation after the break. I’m still waiting for parts, though. Grumble, grumble.

Fibonacci Sequence in a Sunflower

Working on a such a personal project is pretty difficult, but it’s been totally worth it so far. After class the other day I was completely frustrated with my idea, convinced it was destined to be a failure, but a few of the comments I got in class were extremely helpful. Angela mentioned hearing the muezzin’s call to prayer from her apartment and thinking about how people can create their own individual private spaces for contemplation simply by performing simple rituals like rolling out their prayer carpets. Another thought from class has also been lingering, which is the idea that an actual structure seems like a burden. So, instead of building an actual structure, I’m going to try to create the same feeling of a defined, contemplative space by building a wall mounted light instead.

The basic concept for the project is still the same– part one is still a sensor that the user (someone who is grieving for someone who has died) carries with her throughout the day and activates whenever she feels a pang of grief for the departed (this part will be wired for the first prototype). Part two still receives the signal from part one and notes each instance of grief. But rather than a structure, part two is a wall mounted light behind a laser cut design of repeating patterns. The idea is that when the user returns home part two displays a small, bright light for each instance of grief that was noted by part one, centered in the circular parts of the laser cuts. In turn, each little light slowly dims while at the same time the area around it begins to glow with lots of smaller lights that show through finer laser cuts, ideally guiding the user through a process of letting go of those moments of grief. This weekend I’m figuring out what light sources to use (probably warm white leds), how to control their dimming/glowing, and sketching out the laser cut design. Here are a few sites that are providing some inspiration/reference:

Tom Gerhardt’s documentation for FireLight

Beautiful laser cut paper designs at Mister Charlesworth

Biomimetic Butterflies