For this week’s assignment, since the material we are given are electricity and thermochromic ink, I came up with the idea of creating a project related to global warming to raise awareness of people’s use of electricity.

In order to have a more better graphic quality, I chose to apply ink with screen printing. Here are the illustrations I created for the screen printing process:

During the process, I realized it is very hard to mix thermochromic ink with screenprinting paint. It required a lot of thermochromic pigment to actually mix with the screenprinting paint. Here is the screen-printed illustration that I have:

After that, I created the circuit for it using copper conductive thread and fabric:

When the circuit is connected to electricity, the ice-cube under the penguin will fade away and the penguin will become redder:

I made these two speakers using different materials.

The first one is made by copper tape and paper index card. I constructed it by sticking a continuous copper tape on the the paper to form multiple squares.

The second one is made by using painting canvas and conductive threads. It is done by hand sewing the conductive thread into random geometric shapes over and over again. It worked when connected to TIP120 and Arduino.

I made my swatches with square-spiral design and using:

1. paper
2. copper tape

For this week’s assignment, I created two fabric speaks and one on vinyl. The two fabric speakers are of the same material. I changed the tightness of the coil to see how the sound will change accordingly.

For this week’s speaker assignment, I tried different combinations – conductive tape with cardstock paper, conductive tape with soft paper, and conductive thread with muslin fabric. It took me a while to figure out that I need to use the insulating tape to cover one end of the conductive tape. It was also harder than I thought to keep the tape as close as possible but not to touch each other. But the process was really fun.

Demo video IMG_1316

Speaker swatches

I chose to use conductive threads and sewing machine with the 3 swatches and picked a fabric that matches with the metallic conductive threads. Sewing the threads close to each other was harder than I thought, but it was good to get some practice.

Here is my link for Midterm project on Instructables: https://www.instructables.com/id/Starry-Light/

I intended to created a painting inspired by Starry Night, by Vincent van Gogh, using hand sewing on canvas. The stars in the sky have been designed to be LED lights that when connected the battery to the circuit, the yellow lights will light up. Also the painting is divided into two parts. The right one has switch that can control the circuit while the left one is simply a part of circuit. When they are separate, only the right part can be a complete painting in which we can use switch to control the lights. When they are connected, they form a whole larger painting, which the switch can control the whole lights.

At the beginning, I drew the circuit on the paper, intending to incorporate circuit into lines of drawing. I used copper tape to cover the circuit to test everything was working and there was no short circuit.

Then, I drew the draft on the canvas and started sewing the conductive thread onto the canvas.

After checking my conductive thread and lightbulbs were working, I sewed more colorful thread for the decoration. Below is the final version of the project.

IMG_2942.TRIM

Link to my Instructables page: https://www.instructables.com/id/Paper-Bird-Lamp/

I am interested in human unconsciousness activities like blinking eyes. This small action is necessary for keeping eyes functional which always open and close. I was wondering if I can make a speculative switch based on these on-offs to control turn on and turn off the light.

For further step, I want to create information (language) according to Morse code by using this switch.

Documentation with a light bulb.