Overview
Basically, in this recitation class, we were required to build a drawing machine by using an H-bridge to control stepper motors attached to the machine arms. We were first asked to build two circuits individually and work with a partner to finish the drawing machine. My partner, Barry, and I succeeded in building the final machine but I also met with some difficulties during the recitation class.
Materials:
For Steps 1 and 2
1 * 42STH33-0404AC stepper motor
1 * L293D ic chip
1 * power jack
1 * 12 VDC power supply
1 * Arduino kit and its contents
For Step 3
2 * Laser-cut short arms
2 * Laser-cut long arms
1* Laser-cut motor holder
2 * 3D printed motor coupling
5 * Paper Fasteners
1 * Pen that fits the laser-cut mechanisms
Paper
Step one:
The goal of this circuit is to correctly connect the stepper motor by using the H-bridge and let the stepper motor automatically rotate one round. However, I almost spent one hour struggling with this simple circuit. The images above are the circuit that I first built. I thought I built all the circuits in the right way. But when I tried to upload the test code, the motor just didn’t work. Thus, I checked the circuit for at least twice, I still couldn’t find out what the problem was. Even though I asked my partner to help me with the circuit, he couldn’t find the problem either. At last, I just realized that I couldn’t waste more time on the first circuit so I plugged out all the wires and rebuilt it. After rebuilding the circuit depending on the diagram step by step, I finally make the circuit run correctly. And here is the video about the first circuit.
Step two:
In this step, we needed to change a sample code and add a potentiometer to the circuit to control the stepper motor how much it would rotate. Due to the lack of enough time, I didn’t actually do this step by myself. I asked my partner to help me build the circuit and I wrote the code to control the rotation. To make sure we have enough time for the final step, we double-checked the circuit and the code. Fortunately, all the circuits worked well. Here is the video about controlling the rotation of the stepper motor.
Step 3:
As for the third step, there was nothing to do with the electricity and the circuits. What we needed to do is to construct the drawing machine depending on the sample image. In fact, the last step was to enjoy the sense of the success of building the machine. We just rotate the potentiometer to create our abstract art. Here attached to the video of the process of drawing and an image of our masterpiece.
Questions:
- I’m interested in building a machine that contains the functions of entertaining and exercising. For example, I want to build a gaming machine that encourages people to interact with and actually exercise when you interact with the machine. Since I find more and more people overlook the significance of keeping fit and exercising, this machine is a really good motivation for those people to actually do some exercise. Even for me, I don’t spend much time exercising in a week. But I have the willingness to lose weight. Thus, such a machine can really encourage me to move and when I do the exercise, I won’t feel boring. In terms of the digital manipulation of arts, I think it’s a really prevailing way to create art. For example, more and more people start drawing on the computer instead of drawing on the paper. We cannot stop or change such a trend of art. What we need to do is to get used to the new ways of arts and not forget the origin of the arts.
- After reading this passage, I am impressed by the MovieCards by Mika Miyabara and Tatsuo Sugimoto. Basically, people can change the sequence of several cards. And each card has an image of a scene from a movie on it. In my opinion, the main purpose of this art installation is to encourage people to imagine their own stories about a movie by seeing those scenes. Compared with the work I did in the recitation, their work mainly focuses on people’s imagination but it’s an invisible process. Our work is more visible and controllable.