Author: Anya Zhukova

rapid prototyping weekly design discussions

The Crystal Palace

Watch the video and read the articles about the Crystal Palace. Give a written account of your thoughts on the industrial revolution, the Crystal Palace and how it has impacted the modern world.

I believe that the Crystal Palace is truly amazing not only in terms of it’s appearance, but in terms of the way it was constructed. It surely introduced a new approach to building construction, which is utilizing standardized pieces (if they are easy to make, bonus points follow) to assemble a grandiose piece is architecture. I believe it influenced the way architects looked at the building construction process and uplifted it to another level, perfectly reflecting how a lot of things that we use in our day-to-day life are made.

In our current challenge of building a spaghetti bridge we will use techniques to produce parts for our overall structures. Can you identify similarities in your process and how the Crystal Palace was created?

I am planning to use standardized-sized pieces to construct the bridge, which will make the re-build or add-ons much easier and efficient (just like it was with the Crystal Palace). Even though I use spaghetti instead of iron rods and withhold from glass, I believe the bridge that I will build still has some similarity in the method of combining the materials as the construction should be as balanced as possible to maintain the shape under as much pressure as possible.

Do some research on mass production and give 2 examples of techniques or processes used to mass produce products or components for products .

Almost everything we use now is mass-produced at some level. The assembling of our phones, our writing supplies, water bottles and even cars. And there are many techniques that emerged to optimize the process of the production:

Cellular Manufacturing – This concept separates the factory floor into different sections (cells). Machines are placed in a certain order so that materials flow naturally toward the completion of a product.
Machine Flexibility – This concept refers to the capacity of a factory’s machines to adapt. Can they be changed to manufacture different products? Will they allow for slight variations in design that customization requires?

source: https://www.manufacturing.net/home/article/13239976/a-guide-to-modern-manufacturing-methods

interaction lab recitations

Workout

STEP #1: all of the tasks && STEP #2

Soldering is something I have done on the first recitation, however that time I had Lydia to assist me almost all the way through. This time, on the other hand, I had my friend by my side, however I really wanted to do it myself first. In retrospective, probably spent way too much time on that, next time going to ask for help sooner. The problem I had was that the silver wire was melting but i couldn’t attach it to the wires (it kept sticking to the soldering machine instead of leaving to connect two wires). I then asked my friend how she was handling that and she showed me those king of circling movements that she was doing to stick the melted pieces of wire when they are supposed to go. Anyways, after 30 min or more, I managed to solder the wires, put the circuit together and even start programming. However, my computer decided to give up on me again, so when my friend was busy with something else, I create a file on her computer, refined the given code and tried out my circuit.

and it worked! (u can see my computer going crazy there in the beginning). So, so far the only issue I had was the soldering and my lazy computer.

STEP #3

my friend helped my film those videos as we wore the sensor to test the code.

STEP #4 && #5

As my computer was not exactly working with my Arduino, I used my friend computer to complete the last steps.

We increased the delay to 1000 to count only LOW to HIGH changes
We added the conditionals and installed the buzzer to the 6th pin:

if (count == 8) {

Serial.println(“Yay, you made it!”);

tone(6, 440);

count = 0;

}

3. We didn’t have that much time left so we just recorded the video and disassembled everything.

Anyway, I believe that given the limited time that we had – we did a great job! Special thanks to my friend who let me use her computer.

I probably need to do something about my computer. Not sure what yet.

rapid prototyping weekly design discussions

Drinking Straws

Listen to the podcast and read the article about the history of the drinking straw. What is the most surprising thing you have learned about the straw and its history? Can you think of any other products that started out life to meet a specific need but evolved to be used by everyone? Answer these questions in this week’s blog post.

For me, the most surprising thing about the drinking straw was “created” so long ago. I would never guess that as I always seen straws kind of modern “quirk”.

Although, I am curious about why people several hundreds ago would even use them, did they use them to drink altogether from the same bowl or something? Not sure.

Also, the fact that it took the bendy straw to gain popularity so long seems counterintuitive to me as it is, in my opinion, so much more convenient to use than the straight one.

As for the products with similar story, I believe a while ago I read that Coca-Cola was invented to help people overcome their morphine addiction (that they usually acquired after being medically prescribed to take it during treatment after a war (i don’t remember which was)). It originally had cocaine in it (extracted from the some leaf), which was later removed.

P.S. found the source https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Coca-Cola-Company interestingly enough, of the Coca Cola website they don’t say anything about the cocaine 🙂

also, I found this website, while searching about Coca Cola, that lists 10 other inventions: https://www.businessinsider.com/successful-products-that-were-originally-intended-for-a-completely-different-purpose-2016-3

including Bubble Wrap, 7UP (spoiler: also was a drug), Frisbees, Chainsaws…

prototyping documentation rapid prototyping

week3: EggDrop

So, after the last week’s failure, I decided to implement a technique that i have seen all across the Web: the paper straws. Of course, we are not allowed to use the actual straws, however we are allowed to use paper. So, given that, I have created a new sketch of the prototype:

the idea behind the mechanics of the prototype os basically the same as the one behind the failed one, however this time it seems more reliable: the bulging parts are meant to absorb the shock energy, while the box is not supposed to even touch the ground.

the straws seem way more reliable as they were much better attached to the box (the attachment was solid, unlike the crumbled paper). plus, the straws are not easy to bend, which also seemed like a green flag.

the first assembly looked like that:

it had three vertical and three horizontal straws that with the box summed up to 8 pieces of A4 paper and much less tape than the previous try. the idea was to add as much straws as needed for a box to not touch the ground at any position after falling, as well as making sure that the energy absorbed by the straw will not transfer to the box in even larger pressure (as the area of their intersection would be smaller). as seen in the picture, the prototype looks promising. so, I decided to try it out:

and it worked! I was very excited. the bad thing about this prototype though is that i have to butcher it every time to show the egg. but it is alright. as the technique is repeatable, I will assemble it again, for the challenge on the lesson.

p.s. so, i am pretty happy that the previous idea didn’t work out as I probably wouldn’t have any particular idea on how to assemble something like that again.

interaction lab recitations

Arduino Basics

circuit 1: Fade

when assembling this circuit, I didn’t encounter any issues as we have already done the same one on the lesson on the previous day. I used significantly less wires this time!! good start.

circuit 2: toneMelody

Unlike the previous circuit, I had a problem with this one. My computer decided to give up on me and would not do anything when uploading the code to Arduino. I reassembled the circuit a couple of times, changed my buzzer and then, when nothing changed, I decided to try and connect my circuit to my friend’s computer. And it worked (that is what is I showed in the video). That is how I made sure that the problem was my computer. The circuit was fine from the very beginning. For the next two circuits I was simultaneously trying to restart my computer and the Arduino Program, while assembling the next circuits and trying them out on my friend’s computer.

circuit 3: Speed Game

This one took me a bit longer. As I was also wasting my time on restarting my computer, and given how saturated with wires the circuit is, it was easy to lose a strain of thought. I also had some struggles with figuring out the direction of the flow, (in the video below you can see how the LED is not lighting up).

but I fixed the issue quickly and this time everything worked:

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q1: Instead of button we could’ve created a button that would react to the sound of the hand-clapping. This would make the game much more interactive as it wouldn’t be j

q2: the reason why we used a 10 kOhm resistor with each push button is that when the button is not pressed, without the resistor, the voltage that reaches the Arduino pin is not GND, but it should be. Resistor helps with that.

q3: Detect Someone Taking Your Stuff and send Gmail

https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/iot_lover/arduino-detect-someone-taking-your-stuff-and-send-gmail-84c1c4?ref=tag&ref_id=home%20automation&offset=24

The coolest thing about this project is the GMAIL sending thing. I really want to learn how to do that.