Day 91 @ ITP: Phys Comp + ICM

Great Heart — Questions for User Testing

Screen shot of the breathing visualization #3 w/ blue ring (between heartbeats)

Breathing visualization #3:
blue ring + pink orb which triggers w/ heart beat

Today Jim and I got together and coded the visualization with some new images, and made a video of our project for applying to the 2017 winter show. For now there are 3 visualizations. I will also be showing this project as my final presentation in my ICM class to share the part using P5 and also get some I'm sure valuable feedback there on the interaction...so far I have sat next to Jim and coded/typed while he explained what to do, which was extremely helpful for me-- and I hope also helpful for him to think about how it needed to be coded too? Not sure. He was very patient though. But it definitely helped with my muscle memory with coding to remember how to indent lines and add semicolons properly and put parentheses nested in the right way, etc. And also about using classes to organize code into sections, objects, and in general about simplifying code to the least amount of lines, and the syntax for that, etc. Jim's coding is very neat and simplified. I can't say that I would be able to recreate it or the math that is involved sometimes but it is starting to make sense to me, and it was nice of him to let me type. He explained how everything worked very well. At times I was able to fill in new parts on my own and other times I was pretty sloppy and left out brackets, etc, things I would not have caught for a while. So it was definitely very helpful to work with Jim on this (!) But I think we also worked well together, and had equal parts in conceptualizing it, and also both worked on fabricating it. Overall I am very proud of it and am interested to see what kind of reactions or suggestions people have! 

Day 89 @ ITP: Phys Comp

I uploaded new sounds here. I also swapped them out in the code and updated it on GitHub. 

Jim and I also met up today and wired together the Arduino in the new enclosure design:

Yay, the buttons light up and they are beautiful!

Next we will:

- Implement Jim's new P5 library for more reliable heartbeat detection
- Work together on creating the heartbeat visualizations in P5
- Laser cut a new top at the correct size before Wednesday (and later in the week cut another box, or two if I have time)
- Try out using it with the wrist rest, possibly sew an LED in the wristband which could also potentially light up with the wearer's heart rate? Or, more simply light up all the time.

Day 89 @ ITP: Fabrication

For our next assignment with the two different materials I am thinking of making a chessboard with two different kinds of wood. I would cut the wood into strips. Maybe 12" x 12" is good.  Then I would glue the pieces together and then cut and glue again to make a checkerboard...also maybe I would order chess pieces for it and not make those! Or make rubber stamps like these... 

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12/5:

I would still like to maybe make the chess board later, or chess pieces for a marble board I have which has broken pieces. Instead this week partially due to lack of time/finals I ended up going with the stamp idea. I have always wanted to make a stamp of the Perfect Wave logo. At first I was going to carve it but realized I could engrave an inverted image onto rubber with the laser cutter. I think I could have rastered the raised part maybe one more time but I haven't tried it yet, so maybe it will work? I also cut 4 squares out of the 1/8" Alder wood I used for last week's project to glue together for the handle and rasterized the logo onto one of the pieces for the top of the "handle". This time I also used the 75 W Laser cutter, which did seem more powerful, you just have to manually focus each time.

Next I will glue the wooden pieces and the rubber to the wood. 

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Update 12/7: 

I tried the stamp as it looked above and some of the flat parts around the image were still stamping, maybe because it wasn't cut deeply enough around it the image, so I decided to carve it a little more by hand. I also realized I should have flipped the image, as it is coming out backwards from how it normally is, but it's also OK in this case as I will still use it/sometimes I have flipped the logo around depending on the occasion to play with it...but I may redo it properly with a few more passes and less space around it so I don't waste as much laser cutting on just cutting a rectangle around the shape, and then cut off the excess with scissors. But now it makes a pretty decent stamp.

The final stamp and print it makes

The rubber came from the Dick Blick art supplies store on Bond St. around the corner from NYU -- "soft rubber" for printing, where they are having a holiday sale. I also got carving tools and special adhesive from Amazon so now I will need to make more stamps either with the laser cutter or by hand to use it which will be fun...

Day 86 @ ITP: Animation

Assignment #2: Collaboration using After Effects w/ Dom C.:

Some notes: I definitely had fun working on this project. I think my skills in After Effects could still be much improved, and my animations here were a little shaky, and the character illustration maybe compromised because my tablet pen wasn't working for a moment while we were doing this project, so it was a little crude. But I understand more how it works now, and how to animate a character and  setting, and see how there is a world of possibilities in the applications of After Effects. I will definitely be using it in the future and am grateful to have an had an official introduction to it in this class.

Day 79 - 85 @ ITP: Phys Comp and Fabrication

Here is prototype design #1 for the enclosure, made in Illustrator...these measurements are not exact (I also made the back wall slightly lower, because our idea was to have the top plexiglas slide in and out of the enclosure...) I also made the sides slightly larger to accommodate walls inside which will support the plexiglas top so this box is around 2.5" high, 5.5" wide and 8.5" long. I'm also not sure if the rounded corners will work practically. Maybe some other technique would need to be used or learned to get those or at least thicker wood to begin with and then sanding. And we may need some other way to support it from the inside if there are no screws. But this is the general idea for the enclosure for our P Comp final (which I am combining with the next Fabrication class assignment, which is to make an enclosure...if I don't have all the materials in time I will make a cardboard version at least):

And a second version incorporating Jim's feedback, this version has mostly right angle corners (except for the top plate) and a longer bottom plate to accommodate the longer irregular design we came up with (I had forgotten to make the bottom panel longer before, then fixed and edited it in again below) and added a slot in the back panel for the top plate...I'm still waiting on materials due to the shipping backup so I will be doing a cardboard mockup first then hopefully a first version of the actual enclosure this week.

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Update 11/24:

I printed out a tiny paper mockup of the design and found that it is not quite right. I will need to adjust the front panel and also the length of the sides. Need to get the measurements exactly right (also of the buttons) before cutting into the wood...

Also waiting on these light up buttons for "note" + "instrument" (momentary) and "sustain" (on/off) buttons, this switch for power off, and these LEDs for the heart rate.

Light up buttons 16mm

View fullsize

Source

Toggle button 13mm

Product Dimensions: 32.9mm x 13.1mm x 12.0mm / 1.3" x 0.5" x 0.5"

Product Weight: 5.0g / 0.2o

Heart LED

These arrived today! So will be able to measure.

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Update 11/27: 
We met on Sunday and rethought the design together. It seemed that having the protruding front panel was a little advanced to be sure that it would hold up with the buttons on it being pressed constantly, and my designs were not really that well thought out to ensure that it wouldn't break. Before we met I made the above sketch going back to the original design. I actually thought it might help to go back to the slotted design to reinforce the box which would also require keeping it square (sorry Ben, I know you hate them!!) because it seemed to work okay for the cube I made for the last Fabrication assignment, and because it would add some stability considering I didn't have a great backup plan for if it needed reinforcements, especially in the area with the buttons which will be continuously pressed and would need to be sturdily placed. I basically would like to make this very simple and durable for use after the final is over as well (and make two of them!) for us both to use and test out meditating with over the break and beyond hopefully, so it shouldn't break. So simplifying the design seemed like a better way to make sure that happens at least for this project's timeframe. I have been thinking in general about other manifestations this project could take, also with some input from friends and classmates, like making it a standalone hardware/light/sound creating piece of hardware (like a phone app but without the phone and would not be an app, but sort of light and sound driven meditation device or object) or also different instruments that could be created this way, but that would be for later on. In my time at ITP it would be fun to work on at least one musical instrument project or something that could have various iterations with a similar vocabulary or way of being built. But I digress.

Jim and I came up with a design that is very similar to the one above, but with the buttons placed on the longer panel. We will add a ridge inside and top frame for the plexiglas plate to slide in and out, thereby making it easier to open up and to fix anything with the electronics inside.

I will start laser cutting tonight (I mistakenly left it this late because I did not realize ITP would be closed over Thanksgiving week, but maybe it's for the best as some small design changes happened, and hopefully now it will be easier to complete without wasting a bunch of materials). 

I'm starting in general to think about ways that various similar things could be made with the same parts. The only more expensive part at this point seems to be the Arduino, but maybe some of them wouldn't need an Arduino Uno but some smaller microcontroller in order to work. I will leave a bookmark here to come back to that idea later.

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Update 11/28:

I booked two hours on the laser cutter today and brought the design that Jim and I adjusted together on Sunday. The wood and buttons had arrived so I was able to measure the holes for the buttons and adjust them. I had some issues with the power settings on the laser cutter resetting a few times while printing, and also misremembering the speed once, so one or two pieces took longer to cut before I realized that this had happened. Otherwise following the settings in the document on the Desktop of the laser cutter's computer worked fine and I am getting the hang of how it works. Still want to experiment more with the wood shop, but this seems good for doing finer work like cutting openings for enclosures like this. Though it took a while to cut through 1/8" pieces, and I wondered if actually a 1/4" board would have been sturdier, and if maybe I should have used the 75W cutter to do it that way? Otherwise, the slots do fit (we flipped some pieces around to get the text in the right places), and it's a little too big for the Arduino + breadboard but also won't be sure of that until we add the inside supports for the top and all the wires, so at least it's definitely not too small. I think it would be nicer if it was more compact but that's just a visual side note and could be adjusted later for the next one.

Most importantly I already snapped off the ledge above where the top plate is supposed to go in/out, so that is a bad sign and will need to be fixed somehow or rethought design wise. I think one side snapped when I took out the piece in the slot which had been laser cut out, and the other side snapped when I was seeing if the acrylic would fit through (it did fit, but it seemed a lot heavier compared to the 1/8" Alder wood hence it breaking). Another solution would be to have a wooden top, which is definitely an option, especially if that seems more long lasting. I got this 1/8" Alder wood because it was recommended for laser cutting and also seemed thin enough to do a full box almost in a short amount of time on the cutter, but I think in the next iteration of this enclosure I will be taking into mind all the problems that came up with this first one. I also got some 1/8" Cherry wood and am wondering if that would be sturdier also. Again having more time on the laser cutter would have helped of course but everyone else is trying to finish things too for finals and a 2 hour chunk at a time seems reasonable as you are watching it and standing there the whole time... once I get a real plan I think I will reserve some hours at an off time, like 9am Saturday morning or something just to finish it properly and have extra time if something goes wrong. I think as I do more of these kinds of things I will gain a better vocabulary of tools for putting things like this together and using the right materials and steps in the process etc. On a positive note, the heart LED fits! We used the "boolean union" option in Illustrator to combine the shapes of the two sides I traced, and it actually fits perfectly now. Next we will sand down the 3 larger button holes as they are still slightly too small, but thankfully Jim has some tools that will help with this, and wiring the Arduino with the buttons and the LED and the heart sensor (which will be attached to the Arduino through that small hole under the heart shape), and programming the buttons...

<~~~~~~~~~~~~the broken piece 

Also need to decide for sure where the Arduino will be placed to adjust where the openings will be accordingly.....

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Update 11/29:

A little late on this update, but I did glue the enclosure together last night, which was a bit messy. I met up with Jim yesterday afternoon and he helped to file the holes for the 3 larger buttons so that they would fit properly, using a needle file (pictured to right!) to sand them larger it in a circular motion. It worked, but it was too labor intensive and in the future I will definitely just make those openings a little wider and keep in mind that I should size up a little bit... maybe a couple of mm?. Also maybe I should get some of these for fixing irregularities so things fit etc (I was using scissors on a few pieces, which was not ideal). These are the readings I got when measuring the buttons with the caliper: 

I did measure around the part with the threads, but it was still too small. The buttons also fit with the cardboard prototype at this size but not with the wood, I'm assuming because the wood has no give. 

View fullsize

The heart LED is staying in without any support at this point, which is nice! We will have to reinforce it with some glue somehow, which will close up the gaps. If it doesn't look right when lit up maybe we can also add the plastic behind as Ben suggested below, which could make it seem more solid I would imagine...

Other notes: I think the box could have been a bit smaller and less clunky feeling, also more solid feeling. And the top in acrylic doesn't look quite as integrated as I imagined so maybe design wise wood would be better for that as well. It would be great to try various iterations of enclosures that could be swapped out in different ways or used with different sounds and the same setup, in different sizes or something like this. Acrylic seems more durable but wood more fun to work with in general (except for maybe using acrylic to create see through parts/colors/having things light up/playing with colors or transparency ?) -- just need to find the most sturdy one to work with as this board snapped in a few places pretty easily after being cut, or maybe just going up to 1/4" or 3/8" (possibly from this link) would fix that. However I think I would need to upgrade to a higher powered laser cutter as it took 4-5 times to cut through 1/8" on the 50W laser cutter which ends up taking a lot of time.

Day 78 @ ITP: ICM

Three beginnings for the musical sandbox idea:

http://alpha.editor.p5js.org/full/rJLIkC7gM (<-- this one not working for some reason though it was working in the editor...)

http://alpha.editor.p5js.org/full/rJ08A9XlG

http://alpha.editor.p5js.org/full/r1liJj7gf

Currently they all have the same sounds and images but they will vary...

Next step is to make them drag around and pan the sound on x-y for one of them or have it somehow change the overall sound depending on where it is on the canvas, and meet with Aarón again to get some help with the code again next week...It was nice today how I was able to complete a bit more of the coding on my own after seeing how something is done or watching him code it and creating html objects.

Also not sure about keeping these shapes, they were just for testing, but for some reason they are growing on me. I was thinking of using a color from each photograph as the color of the shapes and keeping it simple.

I also like the idea of doing many different iterations of the same kind of combination of things.

Day 78 @ ITP: Phys Comp

It will look something like this...with a new logo design by Tristan Martineau. I'm not sure what it's called- "great heart"? Not sure yet if this is what the text will say but we will need some kind of instructions. How to have people know to meditate with it without scaring them off by mentioning meditation? This is a particularly cartoony envisioning of what we will do, but something like this:
 

What is left to do: 

- Designing the enclosure for print using Illustrator

- Laser cutting the wood and plexiglas for the enclosure

- Building the enclosure with buttons and the heart LED

- Sewing the sensor into the wristband 

- Continuing to work on the code for heartbeat detection and doing user testing

- Finessing the visualizations and how the breathing exercises will work in P5

Day 69 @ ITP: Animation

Tonight I worked on a sloth with separate layers for the limbs and torso (which I guess includes the head for this), traced from this sloth that was also created for an animation. I have a Wacom monitor at home which I normally use with a pen, but it wasn't working so I just created the shapes in Photoshop clicking around with the mouse which is not ideal..so it's a little rough. I guess I also could have drawn and scanned the pieces but this seemed like the easiest way to do it for this purpose, also as the point is mainly to play with animating it and it was easy to create layers for it like a marionette in Photoshop. I have yet to see how it would actually look when the limbs are moving. Tomorrow I will meet with Dom to figure out doing a sample animation with After Affects, also to decide what kind of scenes to add the character(s) into, and will also try to wrap my head around using 3D in After Affects with Lynda.com.

Update on 11/16:

We made some short clips, and plan to make our animation with the storyline of the sloth leaving somewhere in Manhattan (near NYU area) to go to Brooklyn to get a pizza and come back. Not high art perhaps, but we are having fun! I'm still having trouble figuring out placing the character on the 3D axis, but maybe will be able to get that after today's class or go deeper into tutorials to figure out how to include using that for this animation before we finish it.