So mainly this week’s recitation works on a stepper motor and an H-bridge, since we need a 12V power supply, it is necessary to check whether the circuit is connected right or the arduino board might be burnt. The following is the mateiral list for the recitation.
1 * 42STH33-0404AC stepper motor
1 * L293D ic chip
1 * power jack
1 * 12 VDC power supply
1 * Arduino kit and its contents
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
For the first curcuit, we only need to work with a stepper motor based on the following diagram.
One thing to make sure which is very easy to make mistake is that for the H-bridge, the corner with a small circle means where the pin 1 is, I have mistaken it as pin 16 when I first finish the circuit and was found wrong by the learning assistant. And also remember that the 5v supply from arduino board should always be seperated from the 12v external power supply. Over all, the process of building the circuit is not difficult. The following video is the outcome.
For the second circuit is to add a potentiometer to the previous circuit to control the stepper motor. So what I need to do is just to connect the potentiometer to the 5V arduino power supply and to an analog input on the arduino board. I first found out that without map(), the circuit still works but not that precise, so as to say that, when I am switching the potentiometer, the stepper motor will rotate a bigger angle than I want. After using the map() function, it works more smoothly and precisely like what has showed bellow.
After finishing step two, I combined my circuit with my partner James’s and made a drawing machine, so by switching the potentiometers on two circits can we control the drawing machine to draw whatever we want. The following is the outcome, the problem is that, it is very hard to control.
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.
For question one, I think the machines I want to build will be related to visual effects. I think illusions can be manipulated by machines and then affect different senses. For example, the infinity mirror, which is a well-know concept and has been well adopted. It just uses light reflection with LEDs to make impressive visual effect, I think this kind of invention is marvelous which has combined science with technology, which make things look simple but profound. And also the way how to create a work is also interesting, as we can create different frames to hold the works which will result in different meanings. What art means to me is not as simple as how it looks like, but what is behind it.
Question 2:
Choose an art installation mentioned in the reading ART + Science NOW, Stephen Wilson (Kinetics chapter). Post your thoughts about it and make a comparison with the work you did during this recitation. How do you think that the artist selected those specific actuators for his project?
What has been shown in the reading are mostly related to the use of motors, motors are widely used in all kinds of projects to make parts move, for example the robotic made by Chico MacMurtrie/Amorphic Robot Works, to reappear the function of a human joint, motors are necessary to do the work, by adjusting the angles and the distances between each motor can achieve complicated movement. Also motor can not only be used to achieve human-like movement, but be used to all works that require movement. It is impressive to see how delicate artificial works are using several motors with joints to realize complicated uses. When comparing with the work we have done in the recitation, we all are using motors and joints to make a machine to achieve certain goals, the difference is how big the goal is, our goal is only to make a simple drawing machine and it is not even sensitive. But we still can see that human intelligence is powerful enough to use several tools to save work. They use these acutators to think about human motions, to reflect on how and why we make certain action.