Worldly, an interactive, decorative puzzle

The final product, to my eyes, contained more failures than successes. It was gratifying, and a relief, when friends and other attendees found the project interesting. I am grateful that I have a foundation to build on, and especially grateful that the act of making this gave me a chance to solidify skills that I was otherwise uncertain about at best. Perhaps the most important approval was from my fiancée, who has deemed it worthy of a permanent spot in our apartment.  

The map

When I settled on map instead of a globe, I wanted to make an excellent map. In wake of my love for embroidering, I tried making an .svg in Inkscape. After struggling there, I tried in Adobe. In both cases, the design files looks too complex to work safely on a laser cutter.

I then compared Mercator, Robinson and Equal Earth map projections and settled on the Robinson projection. I was able to find a free to download Robinson .svg here.

I was able to manipulate the file in Rhino, and set the 60W laser cutter in the Arch shop to etch settings for 1/8" acrylic (power/speed 20/20, frequency 5000). Thankfully, my test cut came out clear enough to use in my presentation (more details later in the bugs section).

Design file for the for print is here.

The base

The two technologies I felt most comfortable using in the class were the laser cutters and the Onsrud CNC. I felt confident that my design would work, and I was fortunate that Chris was able to help me get it right on the first try with recycled material.

The Rhino design

The base needed three layers: a channel for the LED strip (red), grooves for the supports (purple), and a cutout for the board (blue).

MDF Board scrap

Sandy's trash turned into my treasure - I liked the density of the material and the color.

CNC'd base

A bit lucky that the dimensions came out correctly - careful measurement helped. In the future, new wood might be better, because imperfectly aligned base boards obscure a little bit of the LED light.

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The board

This was the section I was most nervous about - I really struggled to make a board earlier in the class, and had yet to successfully connect anything to a board and make it work. Being around everyone in EECS helped me learn how to diagnose problems on the board and solder effectively.

KiCad design

Took some patience to pass the design checks; it seemed like the XIAO ESP32-C3 schematic may have had some issues in the class library. I wanted to keep it small so it wouldn't distract from the minimalist design.

Time to mill

Learning to use the EECS machine took some guidance from Anthony, but ultimately I had much more success here than in the Arch shop

Ready to test

I was timid with the soldering job at first, and had to use the multimeter to realize my ground connection was properly attached. This felt like an initiation into the realm of PCBs.

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The web app

This was the section that I felt most comfortable executing, but it ended up taking much more time than I anticipated. I felt the 80/20 rule most acutely here. The basic components: I needed a basic interface for the user, BLE functionality to connect with the XIAO, and language transcription and analysis.

I built off the work I did in networking and application programming week to create the interface, which was a key component for the experience of playing the game. I also programmed using APIs for the first time, which was a good learning experience (and not actually that difficult).

HTML for the website is here and the Arduino for the XIAO is here.

The interface

Worldly has a simple interface, allowing the user to connect via BLE to the Worldly map. You can record, stop record, and send your score to the ESP32 powering the map.

BLE success

During networking week, I wasn't able to get my web app to talk to the ESP32, so when I finally did connect it was a huge relief,

Language detection

I originally wanted to use all free tools to do speech-to-text transcription and interpretation, but the Web Speech API wasn't accurate enough. In the spirit of the class budget (tens of dollars), I spent $10 on OpenAI credits to use Whisper speech-to-text and GPT4o for language detection.

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...and the bugs

If I ever want to improve the design, there are three glaring areas of need:

Two immediate problems with the design at the right are the lack of a casing for the PCB and the mismatched length of the map and the base. These were both casualties of time management. I had to use the test etch of the map because when I went to cut my final version I messed up the scale on the 60W laser cutter. Even after reviewing the screen shot of the printer settings below, I'm not sure why the project came out at about one third the scale I wanted. Thankfully the test version was good enough to use.

The second flaw is that right now if a user speaks more than four languages, the app only counts one. This was a huge disappointment when a classmate came to try it out during the party and spoke four languages fluently only to have Worldly tell them it spoke only one.

...the extent of my world

An interactive riddle pitting human vs. LLM, "...the extent of my world" is a challenge to confront our boundaries. Players begin the game by pressing a button, which prompts the display of an invitation: "tell me about your world." Players then have one minute to describe their world, and receive a score for how "extensive" their world is. The twist: an LLM is playing alongside them.

My final project tracker is here. The project will be a geodesic sphere, approximately one foot in diameter, made out of a 3D printed frame and acrylic facets. The facets of the sphere will have a map of the Earth laser-etched into them. The globe will be inlaid with neopixels that light up based on input from a basic software program on my computer. The project is composed of the following systems:  

  • Frame - the 3D printed joints and rods for the geodesic structure and the acrylic facets
  • Electronics - the PCB, microcontroller, and neopixel LEDS
  • Software - the software to convert a recorded audio file into a numerical score, which corresponds to different brightness and color of LEDs

Weekly progress

  • Week 0: A wearable that prompts the user to 4-count breathing when warning signs of an anxiety attack are detected
  • Week 1: I'd like to personify my inspiration for taking this class...
  • Week 2: The game should have haptic components as a reward for solving a braille puzzle
    Week 3: Players should compete against an AI agent; an LLM is a natural opponent for the game
    Week 4: Is there a way that I can make everything in the game evoke the concept of a world? Can I make a globular circuit board?
    Week 5: Cutting acrylic is easy - am I being tempted by another idea? A stealth strategy laser game?
    Week 6: Downloaded Grasshopper and began to appreciate how far I have to go in CADing
    Week 7: No progress
    Week 8: Made a project planner to manage timelines
    Week 9: (break for machine week)
    Week 10: Began making the geodesic globe in Rhino; will need more than Claude and 4o to get me across the finish line
    Week 11: Triage begins - I don't have the time to figure out both the frame nor electrical engineering skill to make a light up globe