these last weeks we have solved the last electronic problems and started assembling the ledworks and testing it.
first user tests with the ledwork
first users of the lounge
Archive for the ‘sCAPE’ Category
sCAPE – last weeks
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010skin + seating + photo update
Saturday, January 9th, 2010After the vacation we’ve set ourselfs a goal. The goal was to finish the half of the roof for the skin. Then we stopped with the construction and we made some more skin panels and we started with the seating elements.
These seatings are important because there is no lounge without seating.
We got wood from Civil Engineering (wood used for tests) and with this wood we’ve build two construction for the seat. These constructions are attached to the skin and they will be filled with bags of sand and some foam. All of these will be covered with a layer of fake leather.
It is a lot of work to build a construction for the seating but it is important to get it right and to have some seatings. One of these days Cees-Willem also helped.
This week we also tried some things for the connection points. We came to a conclusion that the lights will only be in the connection points just like the ledworks because the skin panels are not really suited for light. Or to say it differently the result of light in the skin panels was not overwelming and it had not such a good effect.
first frame for seating
More seating frames
Ledwork branches test
Building the structure
Wired connection
sewing panels
Sounds everywhere
Soundworks
Ledwork connection test
Some photos of progress
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
sCAPE – ledwork in production
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
Frogs, Crickets and Birds keeping you awake
Monday, December 14th, 2009I have been working on a MAX/MSP patch that sends out “random” MIDInotes to a sampler (Ableton Live in this case). The patch is supposed to simulate a conversation between two animals that inhabit two different speakers in the lounge. Later on the conversation might include a third or fourth speaker, but I’m figuring out two first. Also it should remain clear there is conversation instead of total cacophony (look that up in the Dutch dictionairy).
Serial Multiplexing
Monday, December 14th, 2009For the communication of the LEDwork we needed a robust solution. Serial seemed a good way but unfortunately the arduino (both the duemilanove and the pro mini) only has one hardware serial. So we started looking for a solution to overcome this tiny inconvenience. First we looked into a software serial but this didn’t work out, it was a bit too much for the arduino’s little processor to handle up to four software serials (actually it could work with better research but it takes 8 pins which we really need for other stuff). So how about multiplexing? (more…)
sCAPE – sound sCAPE
Friday, December 11th, 2009We had a inspiring workshop from Dan Overholt for the sound in the lounge. After the workshop we improved the sound concept to better fit our vision of a ecosystem. In the wall there will be organisms that interact to eachotter, the ledwork and the humans using sound. They are there but you cant see them like crickets. Using max-msp we can also let them “move” between the speakers so they are not static on one place and can group together. i think this sound installation will really strongen the experience we have in mind. Also the advantage of making non physical organisms is that they are cheap and the coding can be done after the vacation. So next week we can focus on making the physical things and the interaction with the ledwork.
sCAPE – order the stuff!
Friday, December 11th, 2009This week we discovered the total cost of the ledworks become to high if we make 25 so we scaled it down to 12. this was we also didn’t need to buy extra mini arduinos and a lot of extra accelerometers. We ordered the ring magnets from germany. We ordered Lithium batteries and sparkfun charging chips for and some extra accelerometers. the rest of the accelerometers we already got. The mini arduino’s from the minor stock run on 5 volt so we needed to us a dcdc converter that makes 5 volt of the 3,3 of the batterie. For this we found out that the lilypad AA packs can also do they job. They can only suply 100 mA but it makes a big difference in the budget. so the leds will run with a transistor directly form the charging chip. We ordered RGB LEDs for the led works and strips for the skin. The network of ledworks needs to be powered on 5 volt but it will use more ampere as the standard 5 volt adapters so we made a 5 volt supply out of a old computer supply we found in the EWI building. It woks really nice and costed only 1,20 euro for the resistor we needed. We finished the PCB design and are now waiting for the final quote.
sCAPE – Have a good cry and start all over again
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009We closed the arch this week, but it didn’t behave as we expected it to behave. It couldn’t stand without support of at least four columns and it was really ‘wobbly’. One day we came back at DelftScienceCenter and we were startled by the sight of the construction; the top-parts were bending down for almost a meter. We searched for a solution and came up with three possible ways to act. The first was to just build the whole structure and see what would happen, but there was little chance that our ‘pudding’ could stand on its own when the side-parts of the structure would be build. The second solution was adding a kind of column in the middle of the space and hope that it would be enough to absorb the forces. The last solution was breaking the whole structure down and start over with an improved node. We chose the second option of building a column, but in the end we were not so convinced if that would be enough. So yesterday we took the structure apart and this week we will build it again with a better system.
We will flatten a longer part of the tubes and we will add a second bolt in every corner of the nodes. Above that, we will not randomly build an arch, but work methodical to create a stable ‘spine’ which can stand on its own.
