Chronology Is Overrated

Yes, I know, you're sitting on the edge of your seat for the re-cap of last weeks critique... Well, you'll be sitting for a little while longer-

In the meantime, try to figure out where I can get one of these:

Design: Beyond "Pretty"

Carl and Max have an ongoing debate about design: is it a final step of of creating something, in essence the frill or finishing touches that make it"pretty", or does the design grow out of the act of making? Is it process or end result?

Design is both...and neither; it is a way of thinking. Over the past week, I have been becoming more and more frustrated with individuals who even after witnessing "The Future of Design" conference have a static definition of design.

I realize my way of thinking and practice of design are my own and no other's, but I find it completely unacceptable to work with anyone who wants to force their perception of design onto me, and worse yet, onto a group.

As a designer, I do not feel it is my duty to pick up the schizophrenic pieces of mechanisms and circuit boards and attempt to put them into a cohesive package. Worse yet, then make the package valid conceptually post-construction.

...

Rather than validate our efforts, this backwards process completely invalidates them. Beyond the end result, this practice is having disastrous effects on group cohesion. Without developing a key concept first, we have lost the "mental glue" that binds us together towards a common purpose.

Group Bonding... sort of-

The major challenge for our group design has been the construction of an inflatable matrix though which fluid can circulate. The desired affect being a surface that behaves as a circulatory system to regulate the temperature of a building in response to external conditions. A single bubble shown below-

Several issues have arisen from this design choice (among which are my own reservations regarding efficiency), mainly construction of a prototype as well as theoretical considerations for mass production. A heat-sealing process seems to be the industry standard for inflatables, but we are really lacking any sort of specialized tools to reproduce this. Armed with a soldering iron and a few yards of vinyl, we attempted to melt the sheets together. Early single bubbles were initially successful, but later attempts at the construction of a matrix of bubbles became... problematic.

The pictures above show our method of using a laser-cut chipboard template to guide the soldering iron. The quality of our heat sealing was awful. We had numerous burn marks and leaks.

Plan B: Breanna had initially suggested using the same glue as pool repair kits. We discounted this suggestion in favor of heat sealing because we thought the glue would be too difficult to control when we wanted a very grid-like matrix of hexagons.

Now the question was: how to utilize an adhesive and apply it in a controlled manner? Also, what kind of adhesive? As a general resource for glueing, I suggest using thistothat. It's a pretty fantastic website that can point you in the proper direction for glueing just about anything. Our options were to use either contact cement, or 3M 80, similar to spray77.

Application: Again using our lasercut template, I used the spray adhesive to bond the vinyl together, placing straws between each hexagon to maintain airflow once inflated.

We're exhausting all other options before attempting to use the contact cement because its pretty toxic stuff and outgases heavily, and it could take 7 days to dry completely!

Testing of the Adhesive-based structures to see if they are air/water-tight will begin as soon as they are dry.

I also continued to work on a heat-sealed version as I was waiting into the early morning hours for the spray adhesive to dry. After a bit of... modification to our group soldering iron, I was able to get a completely functioning matrix. Later testing should show us which construction method will be more durable.

Old project, New Post: Solar Field

Executing a refined, physical Power-Copy of project #2

Project #3

Forward: Parametric modeling suggest a mode of thinking beyond software, a methodology of defining explicit relationships, complex behaviors, and unforeseen responses. New computational tools and network thinking reveal emergent behaviors, which challenge traditional notions of hierarchy in part-to-whole relationships. Given new thinking and new tools, designers are able to define multiple relationships that can be varied and are able to mutate throughout the design process.

Objective:You are to make a heliotropic field that is responsive to the movement of the sun. Use this project to build on previous work and to refine your understanding of a heliotropic system. Is it possible that the shadow of one cell might affect its neighbor? Is it possible for cells work together to share the available sunlight? The power copy demonstration developed a simple form and framework that uses information from the solar chart. Working with your team, you are to develop a speculative design in Digital Project and a prototype array built with your Arduino materials.

This should be presented as:

• An animation using screen shots from Digital Project.
• An operational prototype of 3 working / related cells.

Obviously the digital representation can include a larger field of components and demonstrate their relationships while the Arduino mock-up will demonstrate the operation of a few cells.

I want to start off this post with a shout out to my group members for this week, you guys were AMAZING! By far the best group experience yet-

Ivan

Laura

Lindsey

Taylor

Zilin

Way to go team!

We worked as an efficient and cohesive unit to create what we felt would be a more innovative approach to utilizing the energy radiated from the sun from a component-based "field". Early on we brought up an alternative to what we called a traditional field or collector, in essence, systems of solar panels or mirrors already found in existance today. We found efficiency to be a key factor in terms of how to best use solar energy. Solar panels currently convert about 40% of the energy they receive via the sun to electricity, meanwhile utilizing solar energy for illumination required no conversion, and was inherently efficient. Thus we set ourselves to the task of designing a device that could:

• Collect light throughout the day. Unlike a traditional skylight, which will let in the most light when the sun is normal to its planar surface, this device should be heliotropic to transfer the most intense light throughout the entire day.
• Re-route the light: How could this device not only provide light to the top floor of a building, but how could it illuminate the basement? What of the possibility of routing external light to an internal solar condenser?
• Appeal: Visually, how does this device look less like a solar farm? Could it have an alternative use at night? Could it be geared towards an urban setting?
• Feedback mechanisms and advanced functions?

The result was a system that utilized two moving panels, in orthogonal directions, to move a mini-field of fiber optics anywhere in a nearly complete hemisphere. The basis of this action was developed from the motion of a CNC machine using two axis placed orthogonally to trace out circles. As the Project developed several group members were very inspired by the possibility of these fiber optic fields crudely mimicking the appearance of wind moving through a wheat field. Because of the desired motion and direction we had taken to implement it, we encountered numerous geometric difficulties. The summation of which lead to developing a flexible wire frame to direct the rods, as well as the only direct connection existing on the bottom plane.

Personally, I was extremely happy with our results. I think the satisfaction of having created the prototype was was doubly so because our group had such a shared process, that we were all equally invested, and the outcome represented conceptually as well as physically what we had set out to do . This "shared" image gave us, I think, a shared sense of accomplishment because our mental maps had become so similar though our process. The fact that we never had to sacrifice group dynamics to accomplish our goals was... a first in my experiences.

Old project, New Post: Light Tracker

AKA Evil Eye

Project #2

Forward: Heliotropism in natural systems has evolved over millennia as a means of regulating energy capture and utilization. The mechanisms by which natural systems (e.g. sunflowers) implement solar tracking are complex, but robust (perhaps due to the built-in redundancy). In this exercise you will implement artificial systems that can track a moving light source, using your Arduino kits and some additional hardware. This exercise will serve as a foundation for more complex mechanisms you will develop under the theme of heliotropic smartsurfaces.

Your team's task is to design, build, program and test a device that tracks a light source (a handheld flashlight). This system should operate on dual axes and be active. Ideally it should be capable of:

• Tracking the light horizontally
• Tracking the light vertically
• Indicating when it is in alignment with the light.

Initially, we were asked to accomplish this task using only cardboard and any other materials we could find in DL1 (DesignLab 1) and complete the task within a matter of hours. It was daunting to say the very least. Attempting to create motion, and keep it accurate and repeatable, was was completely at odds with the tools(utility blade and ruler) we had at our disposal within our limited time frame. After an initial Brainstorm session, the group decided we could be most effective if we split into subgroups; programming and construction.

We would then reconvene to build the circuit based

on physical constraints of the model as well as the necessity of our program.

Before breaking into sub-groups we did a little sketching and brainstorming on "how" we thought our tracker should behave in terms of navigating space. The image below shows this process.

The rough sketches depict the following:

• Our Perception of how an "eye" moves to find a point in space
• An observatory as a known system of application
• The employment of some sort of barrier or wall to cast shadows across 4 LDR's. We thought this might be a good mechanical approach to determining if the tracker is normal to the light source, in tandem to our programming approach.

By the end of class, our group was unable to produce a functioning model. To our pleasure, the class was notified that we were to continue working and tweaking our Trackers for the next the class. Hooray!

For the next week, Mat and myself worked to construct a laser-cut model that could have all the electronics attached by the group at our next meeting. We chose the acrylic for its strength as well as ease of fabricating and availability. We used Black FoamCore in the areas that needed to be curved or in the case of the LDR divider, we needed a non-reflective surface.

This design functioned and fulfilled the requirements adequately. That being said, we realized the following issues:

• The Acrylic needed a more rigid mechanical attachment to the servo. We utilized a Methalene-Chloride Based solvent to glue a servo connector to the axis. During Critique, this joint failed on the top axis.
• Accounting for servo limitations. Travel was limited to 180 degrees of rotation (Our group mistakenly thought it was 360). Thus our model was not truly able to navigate a full hemisphere of travel.
• Red was not a flattering color for our model. The Tracking indicator LED glowed an ominous red color and our group thought that it was a little creepy. Personally, I felt it looked like something out of a "Terminator" movie...

Flashlight Tracker from John Marshall on Vimeo.

Fast-foward to 7:15 to see our design!

Manifesto #1

I am one person.

My opinions/creations/ ideology are my own.

After an inspirational evening I have discovered the following:

As a designer, what I create is inevitably a result of my personal connection to what I perceive in the world (duh!). Thus to be effective I must evaluate the following:

1.) How do my personal discoveries/adventures in design and elsewhere contribute to global change? What makes them valuable?

2.) How to convey this value, not only in terms of the end result, but also in the process of thinking and execution that lead to these discoveries?

This thinking, brought about by a respected and admired professor has lead to the key question:

How do I share what I am doing, or aspire to do, with those around me?

....

I hereby resolve myself to "sharing".

Sharing of ideas, yes, but also sharing of ways of thinking, of knowledge and also of inexperience, of submitting my process to the scrutiny of those around me, in hopes of becoming a better designer-

Revisited

A few changes to the Lotus lamp

6 LED's instead of 3

parchment paper construction (desig y-er, no?))

The code can of course be found below the video-

/*

RGB Transitions

This Program cycles through an RGB array of LED's to reproduce a full

spectrum of color gradiants.

Created 10 September 2009

By Eric Harman

Based on "Fading" by:

Created 1 Nov 2008

By David A. Mellis

Modified 17 June 2009

By Tom Igoe

http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Fading

*/

int redPin = 11; // LED connected to digital pin 11

int greenPin = 10; // LED connected to digital pin 10

int bluePin = 9; // LED connected to digital pin 9

int fadeValue = 0; //Declare Variable and set intitial value

void setup() {

}

void loop() {

if ( fadeValue = 0) {

// do stuff if the condition is true

// fade in Red LED:

for(int fadeValue = 0 ; fadeValue <= 255; fadeValue +=5) {

// sets the value (range from 0 to 255):

analogWrite(redPin, fadeValue);

// wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect

delay(100);

}

// fade in green LED:

for(int fadeValue = 0 ; fadeValue <= 255; fadeValue +=5) {

// sets the value (range from 0 to 255):

analogWrite(greenPin, fadeValue);

// wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect

delay(100);

}

} else {

// do stuff if the condition is false

// fade in green LED:

for(int fadeValue = 0 ; fadeValue <= 255; fadeValue +=5) {

// sets the value (range from 0 to 255):

analogWrite(greenPin, fadeValue);

// wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect

delay(100);

}

}

// fade out Red LED:

for(int fadeValue = 255 ; fadeValue >= 0; fadeValue -=5) {

// sets the value (range from 0 to 255):

analogWrite(redPin, fadeValue);

// wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect

delay(100);

}

// fade in Blue LED:

for(int fadeValue = 0 ; fadeValue <= 255; fadeValue +=5) {

// sets the value (range from 0 to 255):

analogWrite(bluePin, fadeValue);

// wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect

delay(100);

}

// fade out Green LED:

for(int fadeValue = 255 ; fadeValue >= 0; fadeValue -=5) {

// sets the value (range from 0 to 255):

analogWrite(greenPin, fadeValue);

// wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect

delay(100);

}

// fade in Red LED:

for(int fadeValue = 0 ; fadeValue <= 255; fadeValue +=5) {

// sets the value (range from 0 to 255):

analogWrite(redPin, fadeValue);

// wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect

delay(100);

}

// fade out Blue LED:

for(int fadeValue = 255 ; fadeValue >= 0; fadeValue -=5) {

// sets the value (range from 0 to 255):

analogWrite(bluePin, fadeValue);

// wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect

delay(100);

}

}