Week 20 – Final Project

Fab Academy – Week XX

Date range: 21 Jan - June

Instructor:

🧠 Learning Objectives

  • Create your own integrated design (Different digital fabrication processes are integrated to a product)
  • Demonstrate 2D & 3D modelling competencies applied to your own designs
  • Select and apply appropriate additive and subtractive fabrication processes
  • Demonstrate competence in design, fabrication and programming of your own fabbed microcontroller PCB, including an input & output
  • Demonstrate techniques and applications in system integration

📋 Assignments

Individual Assignment

Document a final project masterpiece that integrates the range of units covered, answering:

  • What does it do?
  • Who's done what beforehand?
  • What did you design?
  • What sources did you use?
  • What materials and components were used?
  • Where did they come from?
  • How much did they cost?
  • What parts and systems were made?
  • What processes were used?
  • What questions were answered?
  • What worked? What didn't?
  • How was it evaluated?
  • What are the implications?

🛠️ Tools & Materials

  • Software (Notion AI to improve writing)
  • Machines
  • Materials

📌 Project Overview

Project name (draft): CALM / LumaWell (name suggested by ChatGPT)

Vision:

A beautifully designed ambient display unit that visualizes personal wellness data in real-time (or near real-time) using lights. It serves as a gentle reminder about daily health trends and encourages better habits.

This project explores how personal wellness data can move beyond dashboards and notifications and become part of the physical environment.

Instead of reading recovery, sleep, and strain as numbers on a phone, this device translates them into light behavior. It acts as an ambient bedside object that reflects daily wellbeing through color, rhythm, and intensity.

The light remains subtle and atmospheric most of the time. When touched or tapped, it reveals the actual numerical metrics on a small OLED display.

Primary function:

To pull health data (e.g., sleep quality, recovery, daily activity) from a mobile device or wearable app and display that data on a custom hardware unit using light patterns and minimal UI, and serves as night lamp as well.

Inspirations

Concept images

Hand sketched

Hand sketched

AI Generated

AI Generated

Fusion 360 with paint

Functional Requirements

Ambient Mode (Default)

  • The LED surface visualizes overall wellbeing through:
    • Color (mapped to recovery or strain, and sleep quality)
    • Animation speed (mapped to strain/stress)
  • Transitions between states are smooth and gradual.
  • The light is diffused to create a soft glow.
  • No numbers are shown in this mode.

Insight Mode (Interaction)

  • A touch or proximity input triggers insight mode.
  • The OLED displays numerical data:
    • Recovery %
    • Current HR
  • Light animation becomes more structured while data is visible.
  • After a short timeout, the device returns to ambient mode.

Hardware (still figuring it out while we move forward)

  • Addressable LED strip (e.g., WS2812).
  • 128x64 OLED display or something wider.
  • Wi-Fi capable microcontroller (e.g., ESP32-S3).
  • Touch or proximity sensor.
  • Custom fabricated enclosure using digital fabrication tools, laser cutter and 3D printer.

Fabrication (Updated regularly as the idea is still forming)

  • The enclosure is designed in Fusion360 or OnShape.
  • At least one structural element is digitally fabricated.
  • Light diffusion is physically tested and refined.
  • Electronics are integrated into a compact housing.

🧪 Weekly Update

Week 1 – Principals and Practices

Sketch the first draft of the idea, more details

Week 2 – CAD

I modelled multiple deigns in Fusion 360 and Onshape, each one has its limitations in fabrication, or advantages. Both designs (one on Fusion360 and the other on OnShape) have 3D printed parts and laser cut or CNC machined parts. I made the designs parametric so I can change the sizes easily once I have everything finalized. (add picture of the designs from fusion and onshape) for more details on the process go to week 2 page.

Week 4 – Embedded Programming

On this week we were supposed to do some embedded programming, and since I don’t have all the parts yet, and the concept is not finalized yet, I tried simulating programming the LED strip in TinkerCAD, more on this page of week 4

Week 5 – 3D Printing

I wanted to test one of my 3D designs and print it to see how it looks and feels. I chose to print the design from onShape for the enclosure, which was only the corners where I'll attach CNC-machined panels to later. I also tested printin an enclosure to the OLED display. Even if I don’t use this design in the final project, I will have precise 3D model that fits the OLED display when I finalize the design.

Week 6 – Electronic Design

This week by far was the most challenging one, as I had a little knowledge with electronics, I had to learn and experiment a lot. For the final project, I started analyzing what components I will need and load them into wokwi to simulate the logic before designing the electronics on and EDA (still work in progress).

Week 7 – Computer Controlled Machining

One of the final project's deisgns requires the side panels to be made with the CNC router, to make them slide into the 3D printed corner parts.

🧩 Files

(I will add the final files here when I finish) - Design files - Code - Downloads

📝 Reflection

  • What I learned
  • What I'd improve