“It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.”
Mother Teresa
With this documentation I would like to present the results of our last project developed during the summer term at FHP tutored by Fabian Morón Zirfas: 11EG-B Elementares Gestalten - Basics 1.012 Grundlagen Fläche und Struktur Werkstattpraxis. Link website
For the last project in this term our teacher briefed us with a short presentation and introduced us to the basic ideas:
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Find electrical scrap and hack it.
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Tell a story, a joke or make a statement on a moved, electrical poster
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Translate the human computer interaction (HCI) technically.
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Find a way to hide the electronic components and devices that drives the motor poster.
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The viewer should activate the motor poster passively. No touching, no obvious buttons.
So I started to buy electronic scrap from my junk dealer around the corner while I sketched up my first motor poster ideas.
The cloaking devices is an optical illusion. When looking through a group of magnifying glasses, objects placed between them, will partly disappear by bending the light. When the viewer approaches to the device the up and down moving magnifying glasses would stop on the same level. Link University of Rochester
The next idea was a device that constantly drips paint on a rotating paper. The closer the viewer approaches, the faster the plate rotates.
The chladni device is a sand covered metal plate that makes sound frequencies visible through vibration. Depending on the frequency range, the sand starts to create certain pattern. The closer the viewer approaches, the higher the frequency.
The viewers silhouette and movement will be mirrored by a LED matrix.
The sketch device will follow the viewers movement (left, right, far and near) and etch it on a board.
The last idea was a pan flute that either plays certain tones depending on the viewers position or plays a melodie after the viewer left the device.
After a short presentation it turns out that the pan flute device was the one I should work on. Next we had to create a paper dummy video.
Password: Pan
The main problem was to generate enough air pressure to play the flute. Looking for a generator or compressor was the first step I had to take. This turned out to be the most difficult part. I couldn´t find a generator that had enough power and runs almost silently at the same. I bought compressed air, a 12V mini compressor and was about to order a lego pneumatic generator providing about three bar air pressure, when I decided to reconsider my motor poster idea.
After searching online for new ideas I ended up on this website by accident: www.007james.com. I was inspired by Bonds license flip plate Q installed in his Aston Martin and decided to work with it. Finally I came up with the idea of a flip board device that tempts the viewer to grab at something, e.g money or sweets, lying on a board. At the moment, when the viewer is about to grab, the board flips and unveils a coin slot and a text, with a demand for donation saying: "Giving feels better than receiving."
I started to make several first prototypes and looked for fitting components to buy.
- I needed a stepper motor and a driver to rotate the board.
- A fitting case made of MDF.
- A Sensor that recognizes the viewers movement.
At the beginning I wanted to create a single case just like the paper dummy shows above. Later on I draw the conclusion that it is much easier to attach the stepper motor externally.
The final flip board in action. Password: Flip
The core hardware we had to use was the Arduino board. A micro controller that is able to drive small stepper motors, LED´s and other electronic components.
Another problem was to find the right driver for my stepper motor. I started experimenting with the H-Bridge driver, but unfortunately the device got extremely hot. Therefore I switched over to the Schmalzhaus driver. An well documented, convenient and easy to use device. Schmalzhaus Easydriver documentation
This is the final switching circuit that drives the flip board.
This is the Ardunio code you need to run all components.
#define BUTTONPIN 4 //defining first contactbutton on pin four
#define BUTTONPIN2 5 //defining second contactbutton on pin five
int counter = 0;
int smDirectionPin = 2; //Direction pin
int smStepPin = 3; //Stepper pin
int smEnablePin = 7; //Motor enable pin
int smSleepPin = 8; //Sleepin on pin 8
const int irPin = 1; //analog input for distance senosr
float distance = 100; //set up initial distance
boolean inaction = false;
boolean waiting_for_input = true;
void setup() {
/*Sets all pin to output; the microcontroller will send them(the pins) bits, it will not expect to receive any bits from thiese pins.*/
pinMode(BUTTONPIN, INPUT_PULLUP); // declare buttonpin as input
pinMode(smDirectionPin, OUTPUT); // declare direction pin as output
pinMode(smStepPin, OUTPUT); // declare step pin as output
pinMode(smEnablePin, OUTPUT); // declare enable pin as output
pinMode(smSleepPin, OUTPUT); // declare sleep pin as output
pinMode(irPin, INPUT); // declare infrared sensor as input
digitalWrite(smSleepPin, HIGH); //Disables sleep pin
digitalWrite(smEnablePin, HIGH); //Disbales the motor, so it can rest untill it is called uppond
Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop() {
if (waiting_for_input == true) {
distance = 4800 * pow(analogRead(irPin), -0.935) - 11; //defining the distance in cm. attention! depending on sensor model
}
Serial.println(distance); //prints distance in console
/*Here we are calling the rotate function to turn the stepper motor*/
if (distance <= 10) { //check if the input is HIGH
waiting_for_input = false;
rotate(840, 0.11); //half rotation plus
delay(45000);
while ((digitalRead(BUTTONPIN) == HIGH)) { //rotates until contact
rotate(-8, 0.11);
} // close while dRead BP
if (digitalRead(BUTTONPIN) == LOW) {
waiting_for_input = true;
} // end of if dRead BP == LOW
} // end if if distance
} // end of loop
/*The rotate function turns the stepper motor. Tt accepts two arguments: 'steps' and 'speed'*/
void rotate(int steps, float speed) {
digitalWrite(smSleepPin, HIGH); // Disables sleep pin
digitalWrite(smEnablePin, LOW); //Enabling the motor, so it will move when asked to
/*This section looks at the 'steps' argument and stores 'HIGH' in the 'direction' variable if */
/*'steps' contains a positive number and 'LOW' if it contains a negative.*/
int direction;
if (steps > 0) {
direction = HIGH;
} else {
direction = LOW;
}
speed = 1 / speed * 70; //Calculating speed
steps = abs(steps); //Stores the absolute value of the content in 'steps' back into the 'steps' variable
digitalWrite(smDirectionPin, direction); //Writes the direction (from our if statement above), to the EasyDriver DIR pin
/*Steppin'*/
for (int i = 0; i < steps; i++) {
digitalWrite(smStepPin, HIGH);
delayMicroseconds(speed);
digitalWrite(smStepPin, LOW);
delayMicroseconds(speed);
}
digitalWrite(smEnablePin, HIGH); //Disbales the motor, so it can rest untill the next time it is called uppond
digitalWrite(smSleepPin, LOW); //Enables sleep pin
}
Clone the repository on your desktop or download the source code on your hard drive.
Just open Ardunio and load the script on your board.
Here are my latest projects.
I want to thank Fabian Morón Zirfas for all the support.
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Version 2, December 2004
Copyright (C) 2015 Paul Roemer
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copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long
as the name is changed.
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