Information: 

Time: 13:45-15:00, 15 March 2019

Location: 825, 8th Floor, NYUSH

Partner: Sheldon Chen

Preparation:

Process:

Step 1: Build the circuit

Too many wires, especially when they cross together, always dazzle the eyes. It took me near 10 mins to even follow the diagram to build the circuit. However, I was glad that I did not make mistakes of connection which could break my mac. 

Step 2: Control rotation with a potentiometer

Adding potentiometer to the existing circuit was easy but modifying the code was more difficult for me. The key was to write a map function. After checking the map function I wrote in former classes, I tried to imitate to write one here. I did wrong in the beginning because I wrote the last number as 255, which was for the motor but not the stepper. However, when I found my mistake, I quickly changed it and succeeded!

Step 3: Build a drawing machine

This is the funniest part. We started to engineer as soon as we got the pieces of equipment. In the beginning, I put the wood board backward so no matter how I installed the stepper I just could not make it. With some awkward, my partner reminded me of this and I finally installed the stepper. The following setup was going swimmingly and we assembled the equipment successfully. 

So, It is time to make a masterpiece. 

Ok, it’s a little bit unstable😂.

Question 1:

If possible, I want to build a removable desktop like an elevator that can move up and down between my desk and my bed. It is always a little bit reluctant when I climb on my bed and find that I forget something on my desk. Sometimes I just become so lazy that I don’t want to climb down and up again. So it will be much more comfortable to have a removable desktop that I can easily get my things. To build this, the motor is definitely necessary that I need it to rotate to drive the pedrail, which will lead the desktop to move up and down. I also need a controller to make it follow my need but not randomly move. However, the material of the desktop might be a big difficulty. 

Question 2:

Among all the installation, the enveloping chair caught my eyes. 

The design of this chair is not something brand new. There are 4D theatres everywhere now whose chairs are similar to this one. You can see, hear, and feel. However, even though we can easily find a similar one, it is not a popularization. The standard for a theatre is still we can only see and hear. I like what the author mentioned that “Ours is a culture which encourages us only to watch”. But we, as human, are capable to perceive through multiple ways. So it is still worthy to discuss how we can reform the old ways of getting input. Compared to my work in class, this enveloping chair is more interactive that can motivate you to activate more of your own “sensors”. For the specific actuators, I think the artist might use couples of pulsators for physical vibration, stimulators for feeling, and of course controllers for adjusting.