I attempted to make a fabric jellyfish, whose tentacles can be programmed to curl and relax using nitinol and electricity. As of class-time, I still need to do some debugging.
So far, I’ve confirmed that my “circuit board” (the same one from Week 10’s heat circuit) works, but I suspect I have some loose connections in my actual jellyfish circuit. I’ll further secure the connections, and update here with the working result. For now, some initial pictures:
For this week’s assignment I decided to use a hand as my starting point. Mostly because the organic movement of the material could mimic a human hand somewhat.
Given that the material was quite short I couldn’t execute my original idea of making a hand that closed into a fist. Naturally this ended up being a good thing. Because of the length of the material I used it to make the hand lower it’s middle and ring fingers creating the sign for “I love you” in American Sign Language. I then used one of the pressure sensors I made earlier in the semester, and mapped the values it delivers to control the force that the two fingers lower with.
Honestly this is a much more interesting finished product for me than a fist.
I made a paper painting and the view on it will be distorted when press the pressure sensor.
Video here:~
Code for double coil is here.
Final times! Woohoo! Here are your final deliverables:
1) WORKING PROTOTYPE
You MUST bring your prototype to show – even if it is not working. If you require a specific environment, please email me.
2) PRESENTATION
You will have 7 minutes to present. This includes time for feedback, so structure your presentation accordingly. Your should include the following in your presentation ( in whatever order you like):
3) VIDEO DOCUMENTATION
You should make a short video introducing your project. It should include the title of your piece, your concept, and a prototype demo.
1) BLOG POST
2) INSTRUCTABLE
Here are the components you should have:
I will assess your project by the following criteria:
Ideation, Concept, and Design
Process + Materials
Presentation
My idea for this project was to bring to life a tiny Christmas tree. Winter season is here to stay for a couple of months but Christmas trees will join our households just for a couple of weeks. I was planning on keeping the tree alive by interacting with it.
This is the circuitry, heating circuit + swatch + breathing tree +9V battery.
Detail of the breathing movement when applying current.
After some failed attempts this version kept the movement quite subtle but smooth. However, the connection of the Flexinol wasn’t strong enough. So I had to reinforce it.
For the exercise for week 11, I combined the shape memory alloy with the thermochromic ink, and the sensor I used is a pressure sensor. The circuit was turned on when I press the sensor and the alloy started to move. I was trying to mimic the motion of leaves becoming dry in the fall and changes color at the same time.
Here are the fire extinguisher and the fire. I sewed the flexinol with the red felt to get the fire. And the fire extinguisher is a soft button that I can press it to connect the Arduino circuit. The inspiration came from the motion of the flexinol which reminds me of the sparkling flames. So I decided to use the fire extinguisher button to trigger the fire. The button can be pressed to put out a fire.
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:
