WEEK 18

Applications and Implications, Project Development

How the week started

This is ongoing along with the final project execution. Still also a time to realsie and analyse how much my project has evolved or cut short.

How the week ended

This week's documentation was doen in a day. A pretty long exhausting day I would say.

Week 18’s Assignment

A brief introduction

Celestial Arc is a kinetic dual time zone clock that transforms timekeeping into an artistic experience. It is both a functional timepiece and a wall décor piece. Celestial Arc allows users to keep track of the time of a friend or loved one living in another part of the world. During the day, the glowing ring acts as the sun, gradually travelling along an arc to represent the passage of time. At night, it transitions into the moon, creating a dynamic and calming visual display.

Assignment

What will it do?

In simple terms, Celestial Arc is an artistic clock that combines motion of sun, light, and minimalist scenery to create a unique way of experiencing time. Designed to display the time of a person of your choice living in another country, it serves as both a functional timepiece and a decorative wall feature. Rather than relying on traditional clock hands, it subtly represents the passage of time through movement and light, making it as much a piece of art as it is a clock.

Who's done what beforehand?

Well I am inspired from an already exisitng product. The light in that has to be manually moved

video source

I have seen similar videos of this on Pinterest. They move the sun manually, my first thought was to automate this. Then I was wondering why to see sun move when I already know the time of my place. That is when I thought of the dual clock I use to check my friend's time who is in Dubai. Thus born this idea of moving the sun based on the location of another person. Now I can have a device which passively tells me time at my friend's location

What will you design?

I am designing a kinetic clock + wall decor. The product has an intergration of Mechanical, Electrcial and Software Systems.
Mechanical system

I am using a curved gantry to move the sun in the path of an arc. The gears will be designed on Fusion. The 28byj-48 stepper motor is mounted on the pinion. The curved grantry would either be 3D printed or lazer cut on acrylic sheet.

Image source - Youtube - Accurate Peripheral Motion | PRT2 Curved Rails | Animation

The frame is to be made using rubwood, cut on Shopbot or Zund machine. The images are created by stacking synthetic paper. The paper will be lazer cut to create the lightbox frame.

The pinion will be 3d Printed

Electronic System

Milling of pcb on Modela, soldering and testing the baord. The following components are used Microcontroller -xiao esp32c6 connected to rtc, stepper motor, photo-transsitor, neo pixel ring, limit switch, capacitative touch.

Final RTC output from WEEK 9

Firmware
- Use of Ardunio to program xiao.

Software system - application

I created an interface for the user to change the location , based on which the time will change to that timezone.

What sources will you use?

The pretty basic source to do anything would be to Google Search. Pinterest - without which my project would'nt exist. I do need the help from instructors of Super Fab Lab Kochi.

mechanical - gear design - Gear Generator
pcb design - Input week & Output week
Neo-pixel ring PCB - Custom NeoPixel Rings From Scratch!-By- Hyper Ion Namitha Aravind
Programming and system integration - ChatGPT, Claude ,Gemini

I would also be discussing doubts with the AI mentioned above.

What materials and components will be used? Where will come from? How much will they cost?

What parts and systems were made?

Image source

I have to create a curved gantry and pinion. The curved gantry would be cut from 6mm acrylic. We had cut an acrylic gear for our WEEK-12 Machine Week. The smaller gear would be 3D printed so it can be iterated easily if needed. The pinion would be 3D printed too.

The Frame would be made from Rubwood. It has an aesthetic appeal to it. Though not as strong as plywood, it could hold the frame and the gantry inside.

An illustrated image would be created by layering translucent material, synthetic material. This would create an aesthetic appeal.

The sun would be made using a NEOPIXEL ring. Instead of the 8 Bit WS2812 5050 RGB LED Circular Development Board, the Neopixel ring is to be custom designed, milled, and soldered.

Regarding the illumination of the sun by the Neopixel ring, the question of how to illuminate it without casting shadows arises. The synthetic paper itself seems to diffuse the light.

The PCB and breakout board would be designed, milled, and soldered, as done in previous weeks.

What processes will be used?

What questions need to be answered?

What would be the gear ratio?
How can the pinion be prevented from sliding off the curved gantry?
How much distance should there be between the synthetic sheet and the light source to achieve diffusion without shadows?
How would this affect the thickness of the frame?
Is backlighting necessary?

How will it be evaluated?

It will depend on how accurately the microcontroller can calculate the required steps and move the sun (Neopixel ring). The sun has to move according to the time received from the time zone set in the app. It will also depend on how effectively the light is diffused without creating shadows. The smooth transition of the motor is important, as it directly affects the visual appeal of the sun's movement. The overall visual effect will also depend on the sun's transitions and the illumination of the layered illustrated image.

Project Development

I have added a trial slide to the public folder to understand how to upload the image and its constraints

SLIDE - Presenation.png how to edit and add

I have created the slide using Affinity and pasted the image I drew in Procreate which is an ios app

The slide has to have few details like a title, image, description, creative license, fab logo, fab lab kerala logo and name

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Final Project Presentation Draft Slide

The draft of the presenantion.png slide that was added to the public folder.

VIDEO - Presenation.mp4 how to edit and add

I tried to edit in Kdenlive. In Handbrake I tried to compress the video with presets shared in lab

Kdenlive ediitng

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Handbrake- video compresser

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Final Project Presentation Draft Video

The draft of the presenantion.mp4 video that was added to the public folder.

Uploading the files

We can push specific files alone.
Usually, I push from this location: PS D:\21-3-26latest fab site\ardradevi-k>. So I am in the folder named ardradevi-k when I push the pages.
My pages are inside the assignments folder: ardradevi-k folder > public > assignments > week18.html.
My images and videos are inside that week's folder: ardradevi-k folder > public > images > week18.
When adding files in the VS Code terminal, it would look like this: PS D:\21-3-26latest fab site\ardradevi-k> git add . That space and dot mean to add everything. I just want to add a specific file. I changed the folder from where I was pushing. For that, I have to change the location in VS Code. PS D:\21-3-26latest fab site\ardradevi-k> Enter cd public. Public is the name of the folder I want to be in, as the image and video are also there. This changes PS D:\21-3-26latest fab site\ardradevi-k> to PS D:\21-3-26latest fab site\ardradevi-k\public>. Enter ls, then git add .\presentation.png. You have to enter it exactly like this. Then use the usual command: git commit -m "adding presentation trial image" Add a commit message you like, then run: git push After this, we have to go back to the original folder we were pushing from: PS D:\21-3-26latest fab site\ardradevi-k> Enter cd ... This changes the current location from PS D:\21-3-26latest fab site\ardradevi-k\public> back to PS D:\21-3-26latest fab site\ardradevi-k>.

Time Management

We started our schedule earlier, but I misjudged the time required for the tasks. I should have completed the PCB milling, but I was working on my Wildcard Week project until Wednesday. I had to catch up later. Created this table in Google Sheets.

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More about project development is documented in THIS page.

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