Week 19 - Final Project Outcome
30 May 2012
Click for Lecture Video
31 July 2012
Well, it didn't work. I couldn't develop a working version of even the mechanism alone, nevermind automation or electronics integrated into it. This is partially owing to the fact that the main tools for creating 3d components; the makerbot and the laser cutter,
have both been functioning horribly through this entire course and thus cannot be used to build anything that requires precision tolerances. The main problem, though, is that I didn't learn much from this course that is applicable to the problem I was trying to solve,
and there were no instructors in the classroom who knew enough to be able to trouble-shoot along with me. On the Index Page, you can see some of my sketches and various prototypes of mechanical parts for the device I was trying to build.
I am going to have to build something else, and it's probably going to be an LED that gets brighter as you shout into a microphone. As rudimentary as that may sound, it might represent the limits of my capabilities at this point.
I don't really understand where I went wrong. I feel as though I have undertaken all of the exercises to the best of my abilities and acted in good faith, but having now reached the end of the lessons, none of it has gelled into
a body of knowledge that I feel empowered to do anything with. It seems as though the only way to accomplish much in this course is if you already know most of the material before you ever enroll. Otherwise there are too many blind alleys
and misleading pieces of half-explained information, and very little in the way of founding principles for anything. It saddens me to think how little I have been able to accomplish in such a span of time, and how far from the mark
my efforts have landed.
I'll update this page again whenever I am able to finish my final project.