week#16. Applications and implications.

A little about my 16-th week assignment

Our assignment for this week was to:

  • propose the project that integrates the range of units covered;
  • what will it do?
  • who's done what beforehand?
  • What materials and components will be required?
  • Where will they come from?
  • How much will it cost?
  • What parts and systems will be made?
  • What processes will be used?
  • What tasks need to be completed?
  • What questions need to be answered?
  • What is the schedule?
  • How will it be evaluated?
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    Projects can be separate or joint, but need to show individual mastery of all of the skills where possible, we should make rather than buy the parts of our project.

    More information about this week assignment in general can be found here.

    This week workflow

    Propose a project! What will it do?

    There were some changes to my final project idea during my education at FabAcademy (you may trace the evolution here).
    Now the idea is to make a smart lamp that will enhance the user experience and allow to customise the very surroundings by simple and intuitive interfaces: touch-interface gestures-recognition (Theremin-alike).

    Here are the sketches of how would I like it to look like and what gestures I would like to make it understand:

    lamp gestures

    There will be a lot of RGB LEDs inside the lamp and using the gestures discribed will allow to change the illumination power and colour. I also want to give to the user the freedom to adjust the controls (some system conditions are to get the commands from the user, some are to reprogramm the gestures from the user. To make the well usable algorythm isn't easy, but it's quite a goal!).

    who's done what beforehand?

    The very idea of this project was inspired by the the very first electronic musical instrument - theremin. In this instrument you have two antennas that worc like capacitors together with your hand. The closer your hand is, the larger is capacity and thus you can modulate the frequensy and amplitude for the sound using two antennas and two hands.

    There were many DIY touch sensors made by enthusiasts all over the world; there also were some experiments with gestures based on the optic sensors, but my brief research gave no result about such volume sensors that would allow you to controll the light just by wawing your hands around.

    What materials and components will be required?

    I need couple days more to finish the list of materials, but what's clear to me, is that I will need some optrons like TCRT500 for the swipe-panel. It also takes some mosphets, capacitors and high-nominal (10M) resistors to make the theremin-like antenna, but for now I'm still analysing the schematics and don't know the values.

    Where will they come from?

    If there will be no materials in our local lab inventory, I'll get them from local electronic shops. There are a lot of them in Moscow and I will place the comparation on prices here a little later. It will also be really simple to purchase any parts that are not in inventory, because my main goal is to make this system as easy and affordable as possiple on hardware side.

    How much will it cost?

    Brief research shows that the budjet is far below $100, because I would like to fabricate as many parts for this lamp as it's possible. Check it out: The skeleton for the lamp can be done even from cardboard (look at the google glasses! The point is not what you make it from, but what impact you do!); microcontroller board (fabkit-alike) costs below $20; ell the things needed above that will be some mosphets, resostors and capacitos. It makes the final price really low. I would also like to provide my project with alternative description for TCRT5000 (in fact it is only a coupled IR-phototransistor and IR-LED).

    What parts and systems will be made?

    Here are the systems that are to be made to finish this project:

  • First sensor is the swipe-panel. It will be about five optrons (IR-LED+IR-Phototransistor), and microcontroller that will measure the time between the optron's reactions on swiping. Thus we can get the amplitude of swipe and the speed.
  • Theremin-antenna. The fogs of incognition are fading, but I still need some time to find out how exactly does it work! Can it be as simple as measuring the delay based on capacity of a piece of foil?
  • RGB LEDs panels and the controller to drive them I think that in this lamp I would like to use as many independent chanels to control the LEDs as it's possible to make the behavior of this lamp more complex and interesting. And at the same time modularity can give me a possibility to use few modules and let the end user to change the system complicity according to the desirable price.
  • All the systems described above will run on separate controllers, so to make them work well together I need to make the master-controller and and connect them all. This is the system too and this task is the most important one! It is so because of the fact that modularity is good, but on the other hand I couls make previous points be implemented mostly in software (to make everything the way more simple and cheaper) by adding some extensions to the main board. That would allow to minimise the amount of cores and thus lower the cost and complicity. Quite a conflict! I will resolve it by passing through both this steps evolutionally.
  • Power supply (last, not least important) will de done by using the dc power adapter and linear regulator (cheap way that lacks the grace a lot, but is good enough to start). In future I would like to make the cheap pulse regulator that would allow me to feed projects like this one.
    •

    What processes will be used?

    At least: PCB fabrication, laser cutting (if using cardboard, acrilyc or thin plywood for skeleton) or shopbot-cutting (if using thick plywood); making compisites for the lamp body baybe. For now the technological requirements are minimalistic.

    What tasks need to be completed?

    Find out more about thereminVox is the most challenging one! But still I need to make all the separate systems for this project and combine them, but not earlier than making it all on the single controller!

    What questions need to be answered?

    How exactly to solve the conflict between the modularity and price I propose?

    What is the schedule?

    This subject is under construction yet, but still I would like to collect all the data about antenna by 28-th and 29-th is the dead-line for my prototype of swipe-panel and RGB-LED pannel!

    How will it be evaluated?

    If I can fit all the limitations I commited above during further developement, it will be good. If the whole thing will be more than just a creepy LED-toy, but will allow me or some other people to make a step forward in customising their surroundings and thus to improve their productivity or life satisfaction, it will be even better. But the most reasonable evaluation will be the demand for this thing - if it will be any :)

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