Project Description
We took on an ambitious project to create a narcissistic lamp that wants to be seen and folds open and shines when it's dark and it can be the only light in the room, while it's sad and closes again when there's enough other light because it can't outshine the room anymore.
Planning
We got together on day 1 to brainstorm and devide tasks. Nicole had a good method using stickies and a flipover to quickly narrow down the scope of the project and divide it into achievable parts. These parts where then divided among the group members based on expertise and interest.
We quickly recognized that we would have two main obstacles for collaborations
- Corona restrictions prevented us from being at Waag every day
- the 'break-week' that we thought we would have had already been planned by some of use to spend time with family and loved ones
Due to these restrictions we'd figured that a lot of asynchronous work would have to be done and at the end we had to put it all together. We collaborated as good as we could using mattermost and a shared drive. Altough these was not always optimal.
On the last day we had to put everything together. With time pressure in the back of your mind it is hard to choose between a 'let's get shit done'-mentality and the 'how can we best achieve good result together?- mentality.
Machine building process
Individual contributions
We've each written a much more extensive documentation on our individual contributions on the following pages:
- Douwe Schmidt| | programming the ESP32 that was supposed to detect the amount of BLuetooth devices in the room.
- Loes Schakenbos
| Lights, Elwire and Neopixels montage and programming - troubleshooting power/cables and soldering/montage.
- Nadieh Bremer | Design, prototyping and construction of the lamp's exterior and programming of the lamp.
- Nicole Bakker
| Facilitation of group design session, engineering and prototyping of mechanical parts and plateaus, design of the cover for hiding electronics.
This is also the reason why this group page is more of an extreme summary of the project.
Future development opportunities
Chances are small that this project will see any future development as its creaters are thrive with other plans already
But in case it inspired you and you would like to build upon the work that has already been done, here are some ideas:
- continue where we have failed and make the lamp aware of people using BLE
- continue where we have failed and connect the petels using shine-through paper that unfolds as the lamp opens
- continue where we have failed and organise the power better
- continue where we have failed and fade the El Wire
- Add a voice to give the lamp even more character
- make the lamp less squeeky when opening and closing. Maybe bearings would help with that.
- make the lamp more rounded so it looks less like a wrecking ball when off.
- create a whole family of lamps, each with other sensors and characters
Problems and how we solved it
Below are some of the biggest issues we came across (and weren't all solved). For the dozens/hundreds of smaller problems we came across (individually), please check out our extensive individual contributions
- ESP32 to Arduino connection | The ESP32 was used to measure the number of Bluetooth devices nearby, to get a sense of the number of people in the room. However, the motor needed to be attached to an Arduino. Sadly, we only started looking into how to connect these two boards on the before-final day and weren't able to make the connection result in a number being received by the Arduino. We therefore removed the ESP32 board and added an LDR (light sensor) to function as the sensor on which the lamp responded.
- Origami tests failing | Originally we wanted the bottom of the lamp to have been covered my origami inspired paper. However, none of the tests performed with the laser cutter and vinyl cutter created results that could be used, let along scaled up. Eventually we had to decide to not have any paper along the bottom side of the lamp.
- Stepper motor too weak | The first stepper motor that we'd fitted the cardboard lamp to was too weak to actually open and close the petals. After moving it to a more powerful motor, the lamp was able to close and open easily. Thankfully, the same motor was also able to work for the acrylic version.
- ELwire not fading | We originally wanted the Elwire to fade so we could program a fun sequence but i wasn't able to find out the correct way on how to to this, so we ended up just ON/OFF and even in the end decided it looks the best on so it never goes off anymore.
- Power organisation | We ended up having 3 wires going to the lamp which could have been avoided if we made a power distribution on the lamp it self, although I would not know on how to create 4V/300mA..
- 3D print too large | The first CAD model for covering the wires was too big for the 3D printer. This was solved by creating a 2D design and lasercutting it instead.
Design files
Here are all the files that played an important role in the creation of the lamp:
- Fusion 360 link to final lamp designs | link
- Covers for hiding wires | dxf file
- Resch's triangle origami pattern | svg file
- The final Arduino code used inside the lamp | ino file
