My friend Valerie started a Master’s program in publishing at NYU this fall, and needed a concept for a book to make in a marketing class she’s taking. Thinking about the current financial crisis and various worries that people seem to have about the entire economic system failing, we threw together a concept for a guide to stages of financial, governmental, and societal collapse.
Over the weekend, I put together an early outline for the kinds of things I want to cover in my thesis paper. It needs another revision, and will undoubtedly be edited down for scope as I work. In this case, I tend to go too large in what I want to address in my work, and will probably want to focus more literally on the projects and interactions that I am building rather than writing a research paper in and of itself. There’s time for that stuff later. The outline is here.
After re-stringing the anxiety prosthesis, i worked on making an PCB design for the body component of the alienation prosthesis. I wanted something pocket sized so that you could keep it with you at all times. I figured a key chain would be a nice object to make, so I kept it pretty small. This design measures in at a little over 2 inches by 1 inch and maybe a half inch thick. It’ll use a flat lithium polymer battery to give power, and has a tiny switch so that it can work during a presentation and not be out of juice. For today, I’m working on a final debug of the electronics in the alienation prosthesis, and in the evening I’ll be moving into making a final prototype of the insecurity prosthesis.
Well, things went pretty alright today–it looks like the light is being PWM’d by the xbee based on the distance and I have code that outputs the values (and what I modify the values into the PWM output) onto the screen. The next step is to find the right math that will make the xbee’s really inconsistent distance sensing work all right for the scale I want this device to operate in. This is going to be really rough, and I knew it from the start. the xbees don’t exactly operate on a precision ranging system, and it’s going to be choppy at best
Tom G mentioned that I should think about using #222 bulbs (the kind you may find in a flashlight) for the lighting source in the boxes. I like that idea a lot, and will probably install some TIP 120 transistors into the electronics package to control the relatively high-amperage devices. As it stands, the boxes will all have their own AC adapters, so current draw won’t be a problem.
While Youn Ji so generously gave me her time in trying to make a pattern for the insecurity prosthesis prototype I put together last week, it became clear that using a pattern to cut and sew silicone together is not going to work–my prototype is just too irregularly shaped for pattern precision. What I need to do is to think about what it is I want to get done with this piece and what is feasible in terms of this timeframe (always remembering that there’s time later to complete things).
There are a couple of routes I can take. I could try to make some plaster casts and do molding and casting using silicone, but I am already neck deep in this unfamiliar technique for the anxiety prosthesis and would maybe like to lighten that cognitive load a little. Putting all of my eggs in this basket, as it were, becomes a little terrifying. Another thing I could do is to take the form that I’ve already made, get some more mesh and maybe sculpt over it, solidifying the form (maybe casting over it), and then using medical fabrics to upholster it in a sense, calling it a prototype sketch and mentioning where I want to go with it.
It’s especially worth remembering that I am presenting this stuff in my thesis class in three weeks, and during thesis week in five. Food for thought.
I figured I’d put up some shots I took of the cast that I’m working with.
After yesterday’s kind of ridiculous etching failure, I’ve moved into building out the circuits for the final revision of the alienation prosthesis. Two arduino/xbee circuit boards are built into a single perfboard. Eventually I’ll split them on the bandsaw. Below are some shots of them in progress (and untested).
Later tonight, I’m going to sit down and try to get down an early draft of my introduction and prior art to contextualize my work. I think it’ll be pretty fun.
Dealing with slippage.
WEEK 8
SPRING BREAK
WEEKS 9 to 12
WEEK 13
THESIS WEEK, MAY 5 – 9
Both of the test circuits are now breadboarded out, and are talking with one another in a sense (it’s a bit inconsistent), and i have a smaller breadboard with a serial to USB converter to program the firmware on the transceivers. There are pictures below of how it’s panning out–I program the atmega168s on the Arduino board, and then pop them into the breadboard.
I got the xbees talking with one another today, moving towards a single breadboard with integrated Arduino circuits for the project.
Eventually, I want to have these at least perfboarded, but more likely hand etch some PCBs. I’m thinking a little about the Lockean construction of ownership being when you mix your work with something–maybe getting PCBs manufactured would be cheating. In any case, there’s time to think about that. For the presentation for outsiders on Wednesday, I’ll for sure be using a breadboard.
In the last few pictures you can see that I used some headers and a jumper as a connector between the RX and TX pins on the xbee and the atmega168. I think that this is a nice, slick and simple way to have the connection on or off depending on what devices you want to speak to one another–when I program the xbee with the serial to USB breakout, I don’t have to detach and reattach wires, and I just toss the jumper back on to have the xbee talk to the microcontroller again.
