Friday, March 02, 2007

Week Seven: Hand made conductive velcro

This week was focused on making a soft switch and coming up with questions for the trouble shooting class. Since my final project will (I think) invlove the use of velcro as switches, I wanted to make sure I could succesfully make one without too much problem. I had ordered some conductive velcro online, but it was hijacked by the United States Postal Service - I almost got in a fight with the guy at the post office, bu that's another story.
I took this as an opportunity to see if I could use regular velcro and conductive thread to make my own switch. I started by obtaining some regular velcro and mapping out my circuit. I reasoned that I could sew conductive thread through both sides, making a positive and negative 'patch' on each half of the velcro, thus completing the circuit when the two pieces were fully touching. The real struggle I had was the actual sewing of the thread through the velcro. Velcro is really tough to get through, espcially since the only needle I have that is big enough for the conductive thread is also dull. I ended up poking holes in the velcro with an xacto knife, then pushing the needle through the hole that way. As soon as I figured that out, the rest was no big deal. The other innovation I had was to sew the patches in such a way as to indicate their polarity (i.e. the positive side was a + shape, the negative a - shape). This turned out to be a real time saver when I was testing the switch.

Top View

The inside: note the + and -

Coin cell on the left, LED on the right

Side View

Once again, I really enjoyed this week. I'm very relieved that I can make a velcro switch without the stuff I ordered, just in case it never comes. It was good practice for my final, and I may end up using non-conductive velcro with the thread anyway, as it was a relatively cheap and simple solution (the conductive velcro is really expensive).

Week Five: Penny Switch

The assignment for week five was to create a device that addressed our senses. I struggled a little bit deciding on an idea, because the materials I was planning on using had not come in the mail yet.
I started just experiemting with really minimal elements that I had around me: conductive thread, pennies, led's, etc. Keeping our senses in mind, and keeping to my theme of hand-based switches, I eventually thought of making a switch that would use the pennies as contacts, transmitting the current along the conductive thread to light an LED - I really liked to minimalism and the exposed nature invloved. So, strategically placed the pennies and LED on my hand so as to light the LED when I gave someone the finger - definately a shock to the senses. The switch also had a really interesting consequence: because I put the battery directly against my skin, it gave me a tiny shock whenever I closed the switch. So it ended up being a reward/punishment sort of behavior modification switch; if you want to give someone the finger, you have to endure a shock, but you get to see an LED light up, which is stimulating.
Here are some pictures:

pardon the gesture...

The mechanism.


The thing I really enjoyed about this week was appreciating just how difficult minimalism and simplicity can be. It took a long time to get the thread, pennies, LED, and battery working together -- the positioning of the thread so as not to cause a short turned out to be a serious task. Overall, very enjoyable -- even getting shocked.

Week Four: The Light Glove

This week our assignment was to hack a toy, and make it into a wearable object. I went to K-Mart and picked up this neat spy toy that used some basic LED's and fiber optic cable to make a hand's free 'flashlight' of sorts.
I basically took apart the whole thing, down the circuit level. I kept the LED's, fiber optic cable, button switch, and finger hooks. I picked a fingerless glove I had so I could utilize the cool finger hooks that had come with the toy. I thought they might come in useful for a future project.
I soldered some stronger wires onto the switch, and threaded the wires through the cuff of the glove. I sewed the switch, LED's and plastic piece in place, and attached the wires to a coin cell battery on the inside of the cuff to hide the power source. The results were pretty cool:




In all, I really enjoyed this assignment - you can really get some great ideas just from taking apart what other people have already done.