Recitation 4 Drawing Machine

Recitation 4 – Drawing Machines: Stepper motor 

During recitation, we first started to make individual circuits using a stepper motor following a more intricate circuit in such ways: 

We had to be careful when plugging in the circuit as we had to keep the 5V and the 12V separate. 

And then we had to add a potentiometer to the circuit. The first time around, although my circuit was right, it did not work well because the potentiometer was connect to the 12V and it’s better to connect it to 5V so I had to turn it around in order to make it work.

When plugging in the potentiometer we had to use the map function, so in the void loop section of the code, we had to add map(val,  0, 255, 0, 200) which the TA explained to me. After that, the stepper worked. 

I proceeded to pair up in order to make the drawing machine using laser cut arms and my partner’s stepper and mine. We combined them together and made the machine: 

Question 1:

What kind of machines would you be interested in building?Add a reflection about the use of actuators, the digital manipulation of art, and the creative process to your blog post.

I would be interested in making a halloween decoration which scares people as they walk by using a motion sensors. In terms of actuators, the motors would be located in the laser-cut arms that would move when someone walks by. This is a digital manipulation of art as the statue would seem not interactive until the motion sensor sensed you coming and the creative process would be in designing the silhouette of the decoration that would then be laser cut or 3D made.

Question 2:

An Art installation mentioned in the reading ART + Science NOW, Stephen Wilson (Kinetics chapter) I found interesting it “the table” Raffaello D’Andrea, Max Dean and Matt Donavan. In this installation a robotic tables interacts with the people in a room. This could be very useful in our daily lives, for instance in medicine during surgery the table with all the surgery utensils and follow the surgeons to make their actions more time efficient and practical. I think that the mention sensors senses the people in the room, and that the motors make the wheels on the feet of the table function and follow the person. 

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