Claudia Aguilar

FAB ACADEMY 2015

As you can see in this image, my general intention is to have a cart based on a Salvadoran Folk song, this cart will have to play the exact same song while someone is rolling it around. It'll also use lights to represent what in the tradition is fireworks and it'll be reacting to the movement using a hall effect sensor.

Everything will start to function after someone takes up the back legs of the cart as the bottom will have a on/off switch used as a button.

I've found this Academy work from Victor Freundt called "Nighty Lighty" which has a similar use as my cart but definitely has a more complex design also produced in plywood. This chart allow to have a kid and roll him around and it has LEDs that react with the amount of light a sensor receives.

Victor Freundt work is really inspiring you can see more information of this project in here.

My design spins around the use of plywood machined with a CNC and to give the final touches I use a Fabduino connecting LEDs, Speakers, Switch, a Hall effect sensor and a MP3 Module To reproduce music.

The MP3 module was a difficult component to find lucky I found an electronics distributor in Perú that had two in stock and it wasn't expensive at all costing only $6.29.

The next thing is that this module does not work with SD memories larger than the 1GB and I've been searching for one in all the stores I can and no one has it, I've found out that the Peruvian stock of SD goes from 4GB or more. I'll start asking my classmates if the had an old one that they can lend me, if I don't find it I won't have music.

The third thing is that I need to use speakers, I have try already the ones in the Fab Lab but they sound terrible, I'll search for some speakers that nobody uses anymore and I'll hack them to reproduce my music, once finding them I'll change the torito design to adapt them perfectly.

All the materialls can be found in any Fablab arround the world but the Mp3 module, it coul be foun on internet having variations in price. You can Try Amazon.

One of the principal part that need to be made is a Shield for my Fabduino, this is a new term for me so I'll quickly explain it: a Shield is a printed circuit board used as an expansion board which will be plugged into the fabduino pin headers, this will allow me also use the MP3 Module that comes with rounded pin heads and connect all the wires for the LEDs and the speakers together.

The principal processes used for the production of my project are CNC using the most the "Shopbot" and the "Modela".

The main task to be completed is the electronic, I've been trying to design the shield several times but I haven't got the most useful design yet. Besides this I need to stop the woodwork and concentrate a little more in programing the Fabduino, this is my weak point and this is why is difficult for me to sit down and really concentrate.

Given that this project is the start of something bigger, the questions that must be answered are questions in the long term and at this point I'll have a tested product that should be improved and should have better finishes if I want to generate a distribution or selling it.

Because now I have exactly four weeks to finish my final project I show you a draft of a proposal for task and programming for my coming weeks:

Considering that this project comes from the intention to preserve and spread the Salvadoran folklore this must be one of the most important qualitative points. On the other side is the technical component consisting of taking a physical object, its electronics and programming.