Module Journal: Project Planning & Management

This blog post is mainly research into what kinds of materials I can use in my "heart". Since I aim to make it at least semi-translucent, wires might show through and won't look very nice or realistic underneath the silicone "flesh". The first material we're looking at is Conductive Thread.  Suggested by Julian, Conductive thread is basically thread that can conduct electricity. Sparkfun sells two varieties - Silver (coated) and Stainless Steel. The Silver type is coated over nylon thread. This makes it incompatible with solder, since the nylon core will melt. The Stainless Steel type is apparently harder to work with, but is compatible with solder. If I use conductive thread, I will need to be careful of points where the thread might touch since they are uncoated. It does impart a cool shiny look onto the inside of the heart, which might be visually appealing. Since I won't need my material to have a high tensile strength as I'm not sewing it o...

I initially wanted to caption this as a technical tutorial, but decided to file it under "Material research" in the end since I don't have the materials to try it out myself. At the very least, it's a look into the methods, and understanding that what I want to make is achievable. For the heart, Julian had mentioned the possibility of making a mould directly from an animal's heart. However, after asking around in 3D Lab 1, I can see how there might be concerns of hygiene, and also trouble creating something of a custom size. Due to that, I decided to go sculpting the heart instead, in different parts, and then combine them.  This first video is a pretty comprehensive look into sculpting, making a mould out of the master, and then filling that mould with resin. For my purposes my final product needs to be silicone rather than resin, so I'll need to look into that. However, the video shows how to tape together a silicone mould properly when filling it...

Today's tutorial stuff will be more of a refresher since it's been almost a year since I worked on this stuff. Gonna try to wire things up so that the buttons play different tracks. I might include the different types of input as a part of the final artefact so that there are different tactile responses. I'm not quite sure if they count as my required technical working prototype, since it's loosely what I'll need to put into my final artefact. (Left to Right) Cytron UNO with Easy MP3 Shield, DF Robot Capacitive Touch Sensor, Buttons on Breadboard The Easy MP3 Shield has been covered in the previous post. I've used a loaned Capacitive Touch Sensor on my Mimic project , where I placed the sensor at the top of the box so that users could "pet" the mimic to calm it down. It didn't work very well, since the sensor was attached to the inside of the box, and the "skin" or "wood" of the Mimic was a little thick. The top of the...

Cytron is a company based in Malaysia that has been pretty great so far with their offerings. Having used their Cytron MP3 Shield in the past (loaned from TOA), I decided to purchase their new Cytron Easy MP3 Shield . The reason I got the shield is in order to not fully rely on Unity for my output, especially audio since my team experienced some trouble with our tissue box game project back in Level 5. I'm hoping the new shield will have fixed some of the buzzing and audio quality issues faced with the first MP3 shield while it was used for the Musical Journey project. What is an MP3 shield?  The Cytron Easy MP3 shield is an Arduino-compatible shield used to to decode and play MP3 audio files directly from its microSD card slot. It can be attached to Arduino UNO, Arduino Duemilanove, Arduino Mega, Arduino Leonardo, CT ARM (Cytron's board), and other boards with similar board layouts. A closer look at the components of the Easy MP3 Shield  My new Easy MP3...

The new storyboard is actually more simplified compared to the old one, but clearer. The basic interactions the users will have with the heart is tactile.