1. Principles and practices

This week was the introduction of the new fabacademy 2019. The assigment for this week was to brainstorm for a potential final assignment.

Concept final assigment

The Fablab Nodes Lamp

Sketch by hand for idea for lamp

My potential final assignment is making a nodes lamp of all the fablab particpating in the fab academy. This will be a interactive lamp design where you can see which nodes are currently online and optional which node would like attention to speak (by the use of a different color or blinking lights. The sketch show you the worldmap, I might go for a more abstract design. Depending in how feasible my design is regarding time and skill I would love to see daylight time zone on the lamp to see what time it is in the different fablabs around the world.

Our instructor pointed me on a excisting sd api for bluejeans. This enables you to see the status of particpants in the meeting and use this information to program the design. Not knowing lot of programming and web apllications i found this site very usefull to explain the api used for this design i have in mind. https://github.com/bluejeans/sdk-webrtc-meetings Particulair the sdk: The bluejeans RTCRoster Object is interesting for tracking the status of the participants. This api enanbles you to see the list of participant and also their conditions. There are a few options within this api which are particular interesting for my project.

1. Isleader: this participant is the meeting leader
2. Isspeaking: This partcipant is currently speaking
3. isPresenting: this partcipant is sharing in the meeting
4. isvisible: This paricipant is visible

This information you can use to switch to different colors LED according to their status. When participant are not in the chat the LED shows red which is the default.

This app alows you track track different behavior of the participants

I choose this final assigment first of all because my interest in design and light design in particulair. I think it could connect the different fablabs by visualizing the fablabs across the world. I believe to be able to create this lamp I need 2d and 3d design skills . Knowledge of the use of all the different machines available in the fablab to create a beautiful looking design. Knowledge in electronics to make a working design where led lights are used to light up the different nodes. To make the design interactive I need to learn coding to incorporate the online data in the lamp design.

The reason I chose for participating fab academies is to keep my final assignment realistic. Would love to include all fablabs around the globe but in this time schedule I don’t see this as realistic. I like to make the deisgn in such a way that it would be easy to add more nodes to the design as we progress. In the coming academy I will try to use the weekly assignments to figure out how I can incorporate certain aspects in my final project.

My biggest challenge during the fabacademy will likely be electronics and coding. Have no prior knowledge in these and I am keen to learn and practise these new skills. I believe having this final assignment I need to learn from all the different topics during fab academy.

Time schedule final assignment

In my final design i will need allot new assembled skills learned in the different parts of the fab academy. Since i don’t have the knowledge yet to explain allot of the steps needed for the final assignment i can’t (yet) go in to much detail about the steps. I combined weeks to my interest of topic.

Jan 23: project management Mostly used to document my work during fabacademy. Also is gitlab usefull to address issues along the way and to create a timeschedule towards my final assigment

Jan 30: computer-aided design Mar 11 recitation: design In this week i will continue to refine the idea and start using a 3d environment to create a render of the model.

Feb 06: computer-controlled cutting Most of the par of the lamp consist of computer controlled machines. Getting acquented with the possibilities.

Feb 13: electronics production Feb 27: electronics design This parts i have a particulair interest in. My lamp need electronic parts to work. Still have to figure out how i would like to implement electronics

Feb 20: 3D scanning and printing Mar 06: computer-controlled machining I will most likely use 3d printing for the electronic parts. Most parts will be produced by lasercutter.

Mar 13: embedded programming May 08: interface and application programming Mar 27: input devices Apr 03: output devices To make my lamp interactive i will need some programming skills to connect the server with my design.

Mar 20: molding and casting With my look so far on the final assigment i might use bending material more then casting. Even do i am excited to learn more about this topic.