Marco Antonio Sardo

Starting Here

So, here we are. The start of a journey.

A lot of difficulties I see in front of me, the first are moving to another country, while taking a course in a foreign language and complete tasks about things you never did before (i.e. websites! ) in a week timeframe. It's just a matter of perception, I can see those as obstacles or as opportunities to become a better version of myself. I should not forget that.

My first fablab lesson started remotely tho, I'm going to stay physically in Barcelona on the second course week. I liked Neil introduction, the most remarkable concept for me was about a method to accomplish projects ( I'm obsessed about productivity because I am so slow at getting things done), it's called the "Spiral route" (I forgot the specific name): in short, to complete something, take the easiest path in order to have a testable product, later on you will have room to take a less shorter path to improve it.

Let's talk about my final projects ideas

So I have 3 starting ideas for my academy journey. I'm conscious they can be heavyly modified as long as I get more influence from the enviorment in the FabLab. Indeed it is what I want.

I titled them: the useful, the artistic and the funny.

The useful

So, as my first idea I wanted something useful for me. I am an RollerSkater enthusiast but the worst part of Inline skates is the time you spent wearing them on and take off, beside the weight you have to bring around when you are not wearing them.

So my idea is a light-weight Inline skate frames that you could pun on your basic shoes.

This would solve two problems in one, quick wearing and light-weight.

The artistic

I am fashinated by LEDs animation, once I saw a LED mask where you could put some animation on it and it was really cool, so I want to replicate it and hopefully improve it.

The Idea is to program a flexible LED Matrix I've bought and wear it like some kind of futuristic glasses.

Due the large size of the matrix, the user won't be able to see anything of course. So instead of just making some eye-holes I thought to install it on a VR Case.

The smartphone inside the VR case will be connected with a IP camera to let the user to see in front of him even wearing the mask.

About the animations: I imagined the possibility to change them through somekind of command (voice, gesture, etc..) or that react from external inputs.. well.. possibilities are endless, we will see as I move forward to the course.

The funny

Do you know what a flower stick is? It's a kind of juggling and I play it sometimes.

So here another project involving LED, but instead of light animation out of a Matrix LED I want to use the POV effect.

POV, an acronym for the persistence of vision, is a kind of optical illusion in which a visual image persist into the eyes even when the light from it ceases to enter them. You can display any text or image with it.

So the idea is to recreate the same effect exploiting the circular movement the flower stick does when you play with it in order to have a very cool effect.