⚡ Maya Murad

Final Project
Installation X

                                                 What does it do?

X is an attempt at a light installation that responds to its environment. In its simplest form, it reacts when passers are in its proximity and is calmly pulsating when people are away.

More technically the intensity of the vertical motion of the installation and the light pulsation are inversely proportional to its distance from objects/people within its range (3m)

                                           Has it been done before?

yes, and i would assume much better than my own interpretation.
I included some of my inspo here.

                                           What did you design/make?

  • Casing (Fusion 360 | laser cutter)
  • Malleable surfaces (Illustrator + Rhino | 3D printer + laser cutter)
  • Simple motor bracket, rak & pinion (Fusion 360 | 3D printer)
  • Circuit board to synchronize LED and servo motors to ultrasonic distance sensor (Eagle | Clank + OtherMills)

                                             Materials used + costs

  • White acrylic sheet: 12x24x 1/8" thickness 3mm#7328 cast material acrylic sheet | $8.50
  • Black acrylic sheet: 12x24x1/8" thickness 3mm #2025 Cast Material | $8.50
  • Wood for laser cutting: Midwest Birch Plywood Sheet 12x24x1/8" | $20 (for 5)
  • M5 nuts & screws (x5) | $1.40
  • ATtiny3216 | $1.04
  • Resistors (x10) | $1.00
  • 1uf capacitor (x2) | $0.8
  • VEML6040A3OG color sensor | $2.29 (not used in final project)
  • HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensor | $3.95
  • 16.4ft WS2812B Individually Addressable LED RGB Strip | $20
  • FPVKing SG90 Micro Servo Motor 9g 5V (x5) | $7

Total BoM excluding 3D printed parts $74.48 taking into account all surfaces i experimented with. The final working version can be recreated for $52.

                                       What processes were used?

  • Additive fabrication: 3d printing of rack and pinion and plastic modular surface
  • Subtractive fabrication: laser cutting of casing and wood modular surface, vinyl cutting of logo
  • Electronics design & production: using Clank and OtherMills to produce circuits requires to power installation
  • Embedded programming: Arduino and Processing to program boards

Throughout the semester, I followed a spiral development process, iteratively developing the simplest version of the output at each step, evaluating and expanding on it.

                                   What worked / did not work?

  • (+) Microservos worked well and could withstand load
  • (+) 3D printed chain worked very well
  • (+) WS2812B LED RGB strip is versatile and easy to work with
  • (-) Could not operate color sensor which requires 3.3V voltage via main board, regulator did not help, needed a 3.3v-5V 2-way convertor and didn't have enough time to work on that
  • (-) M5 screws and bolts holding the servos to rack would loosen after use
  • (-) Lasercut wood with living hinges were not malleable enough; I was afraid of breaking them if i tied them to strong to the moving racks
  • (-) 5 microservos + LED strip could not work on 9V battery, at most the battery could power 2 microservos
  • (-) there were intermittent fuzzy readings picked up by the ultrasonic sensor

                             How was it evaluated? What are the implications?

Ideally I would like to test this on many people to get their impressions on the installation and to understand how it could be improved. Due to the current situation, I am the only person that could evaluate it. The only major problem that still need to be solved is the ultrasonic sensor giving out fuzzy readings from time to time. I tried using different libraries and changing the timing of pings which did decrease some of the fuzziness but it is still there.

I would also look into 3D printing a larger size chain to cover all the surface area.

I also found the sound coming from the servos quite loud, which mean it is not practical to have it on all the time. In the future, I would look into ways to minize the noise or use alternative mechanical parts.

Finally, I would like to iterate on this installation to includ the color sensor as well.