| Home | About Me | Final Project | Weekly Progress | Notes |
|
| My Project Goal: Since my interest now a days is to find exciting and interesting ways to let kids from the age of 13 to 17 learn all the different skills and techniques taught during Fab Academy; I want my learning experience through Fab Academy this semester and especially the final outcome project would be related to that. Also I thought it would be great think of a final project in such a way that every week assignment would be building or exploring alternatives within that final project first to make use of the full time of the semester working on the project. What is the project? The theme I chose for the final project would be "Build your custom speaker" targeted for kids at the age of 13 to 17. Moreover; I will try to generate multiple designs for speakers with different features to be used at Fab Lab Egypt as a product that could help in a sustainable business model. Why ? I don't want it to sound too geeky :) So I excluded robots and machines.Who doesn't like to listen to some kind of music at that age! I want to get the interest of most kids if not to build it at least to be interested to assemble it or make some artistic add-ons to personalize it. Inspirational Projects and links about custom speakers: The High Low Tech group at MIT Media Lab was a real inspiration regarding trying different materials to build speakers with paper, foam, and wood http://web.media.mit.edu/~plusea/?p=446 Also This group at Berkeley university used copper tape with paper to try artistic speakers http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/node/11497 And the instructable Styrofoam plate speaker http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EIbzQ_8-aaM The Last one Ohad referred me to is an amazing 3D printed fully functional speaker http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2013/12/fully-functional-loudspeaker-3-d-printed Those research groups made me think of alot of possibilities and designs that could change the look of the standard speakers. An issue will be how we can try such materials and build a good quality audio speakers. I sketched some shapes below  Preliminary Project Plan (Mapping Fab Academy Modules to the project ) Week 2: Model a core design for the speaker Week 3: Cutting the speaker housing and membrane and testing with a ready made amplifier Week 4: Building an amplifier Week 5: Using 3D printer to build parts in the design (could be a mobile holder fixed in the speaker) Week 6: Enhancing the design of the audio amplifier/ Designing a chargeable power suply /Solar energy charged power supply Week 7: Building a Big multi-way Speaker Week 8: Using micro-controller as a media player Week 9: Making a new housing for the speaker using molding and casting Week 10: Making a Mic ? Week 11:Making an outdoor housing for the speaker using composites Week 12:Using Processing to build a media player? Week 15:Adding a Bluetooth audio reciever Trying Different designs with more materials |