May 2010 Archives

View the project page here.

Can be found here:

http://eclapp.com/fabacademy/

Final Project Overview

My final project for Fab Academy is a universal remote I am calling PuppetMaster, due to its ability to wirelessly control out of reach objects / devices using the fingers. This device enables the user to remotely control infrared receiving devices (such as a television or stereo) from a maximum distance of 100 - 150 feet. The user of PuppetMaster will be able to operate the remote by using switches embedded in the fingertips. The board and power supply will be worn around the wrist like a watch or bracelet. (This makes weight and a small form factor a major design consideration for this project). Additional controls will be added in later stages. (see details below)

Form Factor / General Idea Mockup

If IR model - Infrared LED would be placed on top of hand in wrist strap.

I intend to fab the boards myself, using the standard fab inventory parts with a few exceptions, (especially the sensors used in the later stages). The first stage (to be completed by June 1 for the fab academy final project) consists of one mode of control (IR) but other modes (radio, bluetooth and additional gestural sensors) will be added as the project progresses. (See stages outlined below.) A dial or switching mechanism will be added to switch between the modes. These additional modes (combined with the necessary code) will allow the user to control almost any device with hand gestures. I am also keen to develop a gestural language in tandem with the addition of 6-axis sensors (3 axis gyro, 3 axis accelerometer) to the device.

I intend to use a lithium battery for lighter weight and longer life - that may need to come later, I am not sure I will have time to design a power supply.

Overall Project Goals:

• Create a remote control that takes input from finger movements / gestures
• Remote is small and wearable (will likely look like a bracelet or a watch) with connections to the fingertips.
• Remote is comfortable enough for long-term wear, will help to relieve hand / joint fatigue

Short Term Goals By Stage

Prototype in stages, adding functionality and additional control channels / technologies in each stage

1.0 Stage 1: Infrared

1.1. Use infrared to turn off on devices, navigate devices (most likely television)

1.1.1. Most likely commands:

1.1.1.1.On

1.1.1.2.Off

1.1.1.3.Up channel

1.1.1.4.Down channel

1.1.1.5.Other specialty features?

1.2. Power supply -> LiPo model uses lightweight lithium battery and outputs 5V

1.2.1 This is perfect for the TV-B-Gone style board I want to create / modify / fab

1.3 Parts List for puppetmaster (phase 1 - IR)

1.4. Complete working prototype by 6/01/2010

2.0 Stage 2: Radio Control

2.1. Add radio control to Stage 1 prototype

2.2. Enable mode switching on input device - different modes - different gestures

2.3. Experiment with driving a RC device.

2.4. Complete working prototype by 6/30/2010

3.0 Stage 3: Bluetooth

3.1. Add Bluetooth to Stage 1 prototype

3.2. Enable mode switching on input device - different modes - different gestures

3.3. Experiment with driving a RC device.

3.4. Complete working prototype by 7/30/2010

4.0 Stage 4: 6-axis motion sensors

4.1. Add additional sensors to interface:

4.1.1. 6-axis motion sensors (3 axis gyro, 3 axis accelerometer) to input gestures.

4.2. Complete working prototype by 11/01/2010

5.0 Stage 5: Gestural Language

5.1. Utilize 6-axis motion sensors (3 axis gyro, 3 axis accelerometer) to input gestures.

5.2. Creation of full blown gestural language (possibly based on sign language)

5.3. Complete working prototype by 11/01/2010

6.0 Stage 6: Personal LAN

6.1. Connect to the internet to create personal LAN.

6.1.1. Most likely by fabbing a board that can plug into an iphone,

6.1.2. This board could then provide any other user devices with data access

6.1.3. Could connect to Premonition system

6.2. Complete working prototype by 11/01/2010

Schedule:

I've been lasercutting a lot of textiles for a while now. My diorama will be illuminated by a chandelier of lasercut textile and flameworked glass plants. The LEDs will be attached to a photosensor. As ambient light fades, the LEDs will get brighter. These are LEDs that will be within the textile plants.

I assembled these form studies to get a better sense of scale for larger chandeliers. I flameworked these glass components. These forms will also house LEDs. Above are some dolls that I sculpted. I also lampworked the glass eyes, and made the clothes and wigs.

The diorama will display automated figures controlled by servo motors. The figures and the diorama itself will include some cast parts.

My method of distribution for this project is to document the animation, and to use photographs of the diorama as illustrations. My intention is to make a series of these animated dioramas, and use the documents to delineate longer narratives; to illustrate books and compose longer animations that can be distributed.

I initially wanted to do reverse-osmosis water desalination, but then I discovered forward osmosis, which uses ammonia salt to pull the water through membrane, detailed in this page about Yale's evaporative draw-solution system, but then Shawn emailed me a link to Ion Concentration Polarization, which reduces filter clogging, and decided to switch to making an ICP water filtration device with shrinky-dinks In the mean time I noticed that water desalination isn't very fabby, so decided to tack on a PPM/Ph meter and use feedback to calibrate the device.

I then proceeded to accomplish nothing. I don't know how to attach electrodes to anything small, and DuPont doesn't provide samples of Nafion, so I'll have to order some, and right now I'm just concentrating on getting parts together for the salinity meter, but that's a well-documented project I haven't done any research of my own on.

I'm considering switching to building a long-range capacitative+inductive RFID meter with an SD card to do a generic survey of RFID at this point, I guess I didn't panic early enough.

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Stravinsky's first opera was The Rake's Progress, and for years after he always intended to compose another. In 1953 he met with Dylan Thomas in New York to hash out the details of a libretto for an ambitious opera to be commissioned by Boston University. Several possible scenarios were tossed out, including a postapocalyptic love story and a libretto written by a large number of monkeys on typewriters. As fortune would have it, the poet died before the opera could be realized. This machine tells the story of the unfinished opera using the vernacular designs and mechanisms of pinball.

Design

The game components will tell the story of the opera by combining the following elements:

4 possible scripts
12 characters
12 props
12 locales
26 typewriter keys

Each of the elements is keyed to a target on the playfield and has corresponding LED feedback.

General color guidelines for the design are:

Black and white cross-hatch  
Spot complementary colors: orange/blue, purple/yellow  
Collaged b&w paper images

Components

The various components fall into these categories:

 Manual Input
       Flipper
       Plunger
       Coin op

Automatic mechanisms
    Ball return
    Tilt and bump sensing

Tracked Input
    Targets
    Bumpers
    Holes
    Switches

Output
    Lights
    Sound and music
    Score
    Backglass display

In the triage process of the final week I have focused on getting two output systems working; the LED array drivers and the sound and music generator.

The Electronics

The two working playfield ornaments are based on the Fabian Arduino-compatible board.

The Fluxamafet: sixteen N channel MOSFETs on an Atmega168. Controls banks of LED arrays.

The Fluxamamidi: An Atmega168 that generates MIDI sequences for all the sound effects and music in the game. Can read MIDI patches from an SD card and play back according to script and input.

The Fluxamabox (UNFINISHED): A MIDI to audio sound generator based on the ATSAM2195.

The LED arrays

I started by milling a bunch of breakout boards grouping six LEDs into different configurations:

Coupled with the controller, they formed a dreaded floating octopus of wires:

Although they look nice from the front:

For the next group I decided to use the vinyl cutter, which works well for this kind of application:

Programming interface

A Processing interface for visualizing the array. Because Processing is syntactically similar to Arduino, you can cut and paste the model and upload as working firmware.

Here's the Processing code.

Flippers

For now, the flippers are activated by (120V AC) sewing machine solenoids that I happen to have a lot of. I also have a bunch of 5V electromechanical relays that can switch them. Eventually I will swap these out for two-coil flipper solenoids comparable to those at pinballmedic.net.

The Playfield

Just got my pinball balls in the mail:

Here's a picture of the piece of acrylic I cut some holes into for electrodialysis (which also functions as a rough model of a potential ion concentration polarization device.)
Note that I have lack knowledge of even basic electrohydrodynamics, so it's likely this implementation of both of these concepts is completely unsound.

I wrote a small clutter program to change the position of a picture of a Muybridge elephant based on the output of the step response board:
hello.elephant.py
This is the code that runs on the FTDI version of the step response board

It was going to be a skateboard...
Source File

I built Shawn's modified FTDI version of the step response board and got it working, I'll edit this entry to add pictures later.

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XBee Networking from elliot clapp on Vimeo.

Faboost is an automatix-style script to download dependencies for and set up Fab Lab computers.

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Clay model to determine form factor.

Structured light scanning attempt. Figuring out slices for laser cut frame.

PCB designs for buttons and bridge.