Wearable Flashlight

November 1, 2018

For the first week of the class I received the assignment of doing a flashlight with the only two following requirements": It has to be portable and it has to create light. As soon as I heard the word “portable” I transformed it into wearable and I started doing some research on options about how to create a flashlight that could be used in order to solve an specific problem.

While doing a benchmark research I decided to focus my ideation process on creating a necklace that produced light, I found some ideas that helped me shape the product. I also created a moodboard in order to define the use cases and the look and feel of the flashlight.

The next phase of the process was to define the materials to use, I wanted my flashlight to not only generate light from the “front” but only from the sides, therefore I knew Acrylic would be the better option in order to create what I was planning. I also decided to work with “layers” of acrylic to that when the LED would be on, some light would come out from the sides but not in an homogenous way, and instead it would create a line pattern.

I decided to use a coin battery in order to be able to create a small flashlight that could be worn around the neck, this represented a huge challenge since I had to soldier all the components very close to each other. I use a toggle switch that decided to put in the bottom of the flashlight and a blue LED attached to an LED holder. I faced a lot of challenges while trying to make the light work due to the battery, since I have never worked with them before. The final process of the soldiering and testing looked like this.

Circuit with lighted LED controlled by toggle switch.

For the fabrication process I decided to create rings in Illustrator in order to generate a cylindric shape that would have the components inside, the button of the flashlight has a rectangular hole for inserting the toggle, also I left space for inserting a necklace from the sides and the top of the flashlight contains the light which is confined also by an internal circle piece with a hole so that the top of the LED could come out and at the end I finished with one last full circle of acrylic in a with fluorescent film on top.

I had to ensemble all the rings one by one and make sure that they were aligned and forming the desirable shape, at the same time the placement of the component represented a challenge due to the change in the diameter of the rings, therefore I had to make sure that at the end all the components would fit once I closed the flashlight.

Assembly of the rings with the components inside

The final result is a flashlight that can be worn as a necklace therefore the light can be generated wherever the user is. The biggest challenges of this project were trying to align the rings at the same time of keeping the components inside the cylinder and specially having to understand how to use small components in order to create a wearable device.

Dancing Waves

October 30, 2018

For this weeks project I decided to work with sound and try to connect it to a sketch that we developed in the math for p5 session with Jiwon. My start point was the following sketch:

Sin, Cos waves generation in ICM Math help session with Jiwon.

As part of my exploration I decided to create a toggle button so that I could control de audio and pause it whenever I want to. I started playing with different waves distributed in the vertical space and applying different colors and opacity in order to generate an interesting visualization.

Using the sound amplitude as an input in the waves amplitude

Once I was able to connect the audio with the amplitude of the waves I tried to incorporate more opacity in order for the ellipses to leave a trace and play with the interactivity of the sketch. The final result is a series of waves generated with the “sin” function which also change the colors according to the same function and are mapped in the y axis (the higher in y the bigger the ellipse size). The amplitude of the waves changes according to the amplitude of the sound waves which make it look like they are dancing with the music.

Final Design and distribution of waves in the space

p5.js sketch

Video and Sound: Tisch Health Services Infomercial

October 17, 2018

This is the final result of the process that I started describing in the previous post. My team and I wanted to focus on developing an infomercial that would have some kind of positive impact, therefore we decided to represent the different manifestations of stress and anxiety that are triggered while studying in Grad School at Tisch.

Week6: Serial communication from Arduino to P5.js

October 16, 2018

For this week’s assignments I decided to focus on the serial communication between Arduino and p5.js. I decided to implement a flex sensor that would receive the values depending on the bend angle and use those dynamic values to draw elements in the p5 canvas.

Week 5: Drawing with arrays

October 9, 2018

For this week’s assignment I decided to focus on understanding how to implement arrays by incorporating them into last’s week project. I decided to work with ellipses instead of lines and create a tool that enabled users to draw by creating points in the screen.

Week 4: Lines Mirror

October 2, 2018

The bigger challenge for this week’s project was to be able to organize the code in a Class and Method based structure. I decided to first start with some very basic element. I started with an ellipse and I was able to implement the class in the same class that we did it at school however I realized the shape was not what I wanted to use in order to generate some interesting concept for this week. Therefore I decided to start experimenting with lines.

Week 4: Lazy Candy Dispenser

October 2, 2018

For this week I decided to apply the knowledge acquired during the past classes in order to create a candy dispenser machine that would provide the candies when the user makes a gesture with the hand, like if they were asking for the candies to come out.

The main idea behind the concept was to create a machine that would recognize basic human expressions to activate the servo motor and for that I used the gesture of curling the fingers.

Week 3: Angry/In Love Sloth

September 25, 2018

For these week’s assignment I decided to continue working with the concept of the sloth that feel in love while holding hands, the last week I wanted the eyes to be white when there was no contact and then turn red when the switch was on, however since I didn’t know how to program the Arduino I didn’t do it. For this week I already have the required knowledge to (at least) try to program the LED lights in a more coherent way according to my concept.

Week 4: Sound walk reflexion and video storyboarding

September 25, 2018

For this week we formed new teams and received a new assignment specifically for Video production. Me and my team met during the week and started a quick brainstorming session to define the subject of our video. We had already discussed that we wanted to create something with meaning and not to create just something funny or fake marketing therefore we focussed our ideas thinking about a final result that would have a positive effect in out audience.

Interactive technology in public: Citi Bike

September 25, 2018

For this assignment I choose “City Bike”, a piece of interactive technology used in public by multiple people. The systems consists on two different platforms: 1) physical kiosk in each bike station, 2) mobile app. For the assignment purposes I will focus on the kiosk and the interaction of the users with the bike stations. I did my research on the Washington Pi & Broadway station, which I figured is not a very touristic location, most of the users already know how to use the system and they normally already have the code in their phones when they approach the station. I assumed that the interaction with the kiosk would be fast and easy however it might be challenging for tourists who are not used to these kind of interfaces, specially non english speakers.

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