I have decided to make some stressballs that can communicate with each other. If I can successfully make two, I'd like to eventually make many more so that I can simulate a viral stress network for fun. In order to better demonstrate what exactly it is I'm trying to do, I'm made two blender animations.
Viral Stress Balls 1 (right click and download .avi file)
Viral Stress Balls 2 (right click and download.avi file)
There will be several parts to this project. I have narrowed it down to a few partitions (1) a mechanical job (2) a wireless implementation (3) a decision for the medium
For the mechanical portion, I originally thought to use some gears and motors or perhaps even a mechanism with a spring and a motor. However, after speaking to Neil, he suggested that I use a solenoid because it would give me the few degrees of freedom that I would need.
For the wireless implementation, I would really like to try and look into the Internet0 rather than using a Zigbee chip for example. An example of the uses of Internet0 is here In essence, it is bringing the internet nodes away from what we currently know as the Internet. Trying to implement one of Neil's devices would really allow for a lot of place for growth in the future. The video shows something with one degree of freedom. For the first prototype, I think that just having this degree of freedom would be excellent
For the stressball to be really attractive and have a usability appeal (such as in the Blender model), the medium would have to be convincing. While sewing a cloth shell is one possibility, I would really like to have the rubber feel of stress balls that we're accustomed to.