The first attempt was made using copper tape on paper in a mountain-ish design.  This one didn’t end up working.  I’m guessing this was caused by too many separate strips of copper tape.  The second attempt, made with Xiaoqi was made of paper with strips cut either side (not pictured).  In each of these cuts, conductive thread was wrapped around.  This created a very subtle sound, yet was much easier to create than the copper tape speaker.  The final one I made was created using a small bag in which the magnets were placed, with conductive thread wrapped generously around it.  This one worked the best, which is funny, because I didn’t realize I was using an anti-static bag.  It would seem as though static electricity and electromagnetic forces might not interfere too much.

Originally inspired by the possibilities for speaker design with copper tape, I started thinking about different ways to make this interesting.  My first thought was to make a laser cut enclosure with a magnet in the center, separated by transparent plexi from some sort of conductive material coiled around the outside.  I considered having this either float in a liquid or possibly some kind of light material, such as popcorn or packing peanuts.  I thought it also might be interesting to see what would happen with iron filaments in there as well, whether they would be able to visualize the oscillating magnetic forces involved.  Discussing it with my peers, I was reminded of the capacitive sensing we did earlier in the course and was also referred to this project.  Perhaps it will become some kind of theremin, which could be interesting, but would be challenging to institute an original take on.

In playing with thermochromic ink, I noticed the black pigment disappeared and never came back after drying it with the heat gun.  To reset the color, I had to put it in the kitchen fridge.  Perhaps the threshold is too low for this setting.

Here are the videos of the flexinol muscle wire action.  The weight of the canvas material probably held back the movement, but it seemed better with a little help from gravity.

Videos:

https://plus.google.com/100428831157187826962/posts/cWjSL63zUAW

https://plus.google.com/100428831157187826962/posts/RP6khX4nfJm

Flexinol moving fabric

I wanted to create a breathing effect with the fabric, so I sewed the flexinol wire directly to the fabric and connected it to the Arduino using alligator clips and jumper wires. When I ran the Fade example sketch, it worked (eventually)!

Denah and I trained a piece of flexinol by wrapping it around a pencil and heating it up. Then we sewed it into the hem of a black dress. we sewed some red string so that it would be easier to see the movement. We connected the ends of the flexinol to alligator clips and to the positive and negative sides of a battery. Watch it move!