A quick recap of what we did during the past weeks: we are designing a dehydration band to remind the users to drink water. In the last week, we have successfully tested our customized sensor on the regular Arduino and we also generated a hand-made circuit.

This week, to improve the precision of our circuit, we made a silhouette-cut circuit. It looks very beautiful, right?

To make sure the mini-controller, a mini-Arduino, connect smoothly to the silhouette, I needed to solder the pin to its corresponding copper tape. I had to be extremely cautious because the signal for each pin was independent from others. If I soldered two pins or two copper tapes together, the system would malfunction. In other words, the dehydration detection band could not detect the humidity level of user’s skin properly. Then, I needed to place two mini-resistors on the side of the mini-controller. Once again, to ensure the connectivity, I needed to solder the resistors to the circuit. The picture below was the motherboard of our Dehydration Band. Next we would integrate the sensor to it.

(Someone’s hand is holding the sensor)

Because we needed to place the integrated circuit into a 3D printing band in the end, we had to attach our customized sensor on the back of the motherboard, where the sensor could contact user’s skin. At first, I only used the slim copper tape to connect the sensor to the motherboard. However, resistance detector displayed that there was no connection at all. Then, I realized that I still needed to use solder to solder the sensor to the motherboard. Next, we chose a small button battery and soldered it to the mother board. As you can see from the picture below, this is the final version of our prototype. After the last four weeks’ multiple attempts and three experimental prototypes, now we are so close to the end of our project.

In the following week, we will import the tested code to the mini-controller and place the integrated motherboard into 3D printing band. Then, we will do the final prototype-testing and make trivial adjustments.

After soldering Arduino circuit last week, we came to the Fablab the second time this week for the next stage of our project. Arduino circuit is an internal function unit of our project and we successfully made it last week. This week, our goal was to design an exterior shell for the project. First thing first, we needed to design the patterns or pictures with the help of the open-source software Inkscape. Inkscape was quite user-friendly and we were able to use the basic functionalities to design our own work after listening the short demonstration shown by the instructors at the FabLab. Basically, we would import our favorable pictures from the Internet to Inkscape and then trace the picture so that the picture would have been transformed into the vectors. The transformed pictures could allow the users to precisely adjust the pictures points by points.

The container consisted of 6 pieces of wooden board. Thus, we designed the size and shape of each wooden board on Internet. After importing the board outline into the Inkscape, we would place our customized imagines into each board. By default, we set color in RBG mode with 255 for Red and 0.001 m for the size of cut. We had to ensure that these parameters were definitely correct so that the laser cutter could precisely conduct the objects we designed. As you can tell from the picture below, I am a big fan of comic. The images I chose were Batman, Naruto, Pokemon, and Onepiece.

Although the laser printer was efficient at producing customized artwork, we only had two laser printers while 8 objects needed to be printed. Thus, I waited for almost 15 minutes before the printer started to print my own object. I was so excited when seeing my design printed into physical objects. Now, I had the internal circuits and external containers. Next Monday, I would learn how to code and import a program into the circuits. I can’t wait to see my final project when I finished all of the three different but inter-related parts.

It had been two weeks since Jeff Ginger, the director at the Illinois Informatics Institute, gave us a detailed introduction about 3D printing and talked about interesting stories happened in the Fab Lab. This week, we made our first visit to the Fab lab, an open and collaborative workshop space for computer-driven innovation on U of I campus. At the very beginning, Jeff led us to see the main functional areas in the lab. Basically, the lab had four main areas. Adjacent to the front door, 3D printing and scanning area allowed users to actually make their designs. On the same floor, there was a small room for making small electronics fabrication. Now, the room had been used for exploring bio-3D printing. Soldering and diagnostics room was on the second floor, and laser cutting room was on the third floor.

After a brief overview of the Fab Lab, we were divided into three groups, one for laser cutting, one for soldering, and one for coding. This week, I voluntarily joined into the soldering group because I had soldered circuit board in my high school. Though I have some experience, it had been 4 years since the last time I soldered circuit board and the project is much easier back in high school.

The main purpose of our assignments was to connect the LED lights, light sensor to a circuit board so that the system can automatically turn on the LED lights when the light sensor can’t detect light. Initially, we had Arduino circuit board, 5 LED lights, resistors, light sensors, wires, and soldiering iron in front of us. Under the instructions of Duncan and Andrea, I could solder the LED lights and wires correctly. I had to mention that the “helping hand” was a tool to hold wires for users to solder. However, we had more users than the holding tools and I did not have one. It was quite challenging to solder 3 wires together without the help of the holding tool. As a result, I failed much more times than my friends in the group. Despite of the unfavorable circumstances, I successfully soldered the wires and lights together. As you can see from the video below, the light will be turned on/off depending on the light detection of the sensor.

One of our proposal for our final projects is to make a light & noise detection lamp. After soldering this circuit board, I believe the lamp is much more doable than I previously thought. We will talk our ideas with the staff at Fab Lab to gather more information before deciding the final design.

Michael Carroll, a researcher at Fast Company magazine, used to work with C-level leaders who have difficulty to support their ideas as an executive coach. Based on his experience helping the top management to solve the problem, Michael found that the people who can successfully bring new ideas to maneuver have a common characteristic, resonance. It is important to resonate or experience others as if from within their own skin so that agents could have a broad perspective about the whole issue. Then, the agents could generate proposals that cater to different stakeholders.

Design Proposal:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0PlDuRzfAznWXNaVUZ3b09tMkE/view?usp=sharing

Same reasons apply to the methodology we adopt for the semester project. After learning necessary skills of 3D designing software in the past weeks, we formally started to design for the semester-long project. Focusing on resonance or empathy, we began brainstorming.

First of all, personally I always want to get a case for my laptop, Razerblade. However, it is a very uncommon brand and only has a few users. Accessory suppliers do not have the interest for making the customized case for Razerblade. I do believe the users of other uncommon brand laptop must have the same problems as well. Thus, the first idea for the final project is to design an expandable laptop case. Because the size of the laptop case can be adjusted, it literally can fit any laptop regardless of their sizes or types.

One of my teammates cares a lot about her health condition. She would often dehydrate while she herself does not notice the situation at all. Although she has a fitbit to keep track of her health condition, she still would not drink water timely. Accordingly, we think a lightening wristband that can remind users to drink water would help dehydrated persons solve the problem easily.

Sometimes, we also notice that in our apartments, lights or lamps are on while no one is in the room. To make our apartment green, we want to design a solar panel noise detection lamp. The lamp will turn on automatically when it senses noise and will dim when the environment is quite. Users can place it under sunlight in the daytime to charge. We believe this lamp can not only make users lives convenient but also more green.

Bike is one of the most common transportation tools on campus. Every cyclist knows the importance of wearing a helmet, but at least half of them even do not have one. It is cumbersome to carry a helmet, especially when the user has to carry it from one classroom to another. To solve the problem, we plan to design a contractible bike helmet with a lock. The helmet can be contracted into a lock when the cyclist park the bike.

Honestly, I didn’t expect that we can generate so many ideas within 20 minutes. I have to say the positive atmosphere really boosts the innovation among us. As emphasized in the supplemental readings, belief in yourself and your colleagues will create a mutual positive influence.

We have Jeff Smith, the industrial designer at Autodesk, as our guest speaker this week. Although Jeff used his most of time explaining how to use Fusion360 and why it is superior to the other competitive products, Jeff’s self-introduction indeed contained a lot of wisdom. First of all, he called him a “dinosaur”, because Jeff was the in the last generation in his college that purely used “analogy design methodology” (not sure whether this is the terminology he said) and Photoshop was barely in beta version. It is crazy to see that what people learned in college might immediately be replaced by other advanced technologies nowadays. Does that mean we do not need to study hard anymore? Absolutely not, we still do need to master the subjects in our curriculum. On one hand, no one knows exactly when the new technology will replace the old one; on the other hand, the experience we accumulated by studying the old method will broaden our perspective when applying new technology. All in all, we need to keep an open mind to new tool/ technology all the time.

Jeff also emphasized the importance of network. Before working for Autodesk, Jeff worked for Autodesk’s competing company for decades. It would be a nightmare for anyone when he/she is informed to leave the company after he/she had worked for such a long time. Unfortunately, Jeff faced this kind of tough situation.  Though frustrated about his unemployment, Jeff found a new job with the help of his network in the following weeks. Jeff himself also said that he did not expect he would work for his original company’s competitor and his network would help him secure a new job when he needed most. These two episodes have nothing to do with 3D modeling, but I do believe we can learn a lot from these two events.

Fusion360 is a computer-aided design application for creating 3D digital prototypes. Similar to Cura, Fusion360 enables users to design prototypes or edit other’s projects. Under Jeff’s instruction, we have a quick overview of Fusion360’s user interface. Then, we start to sketch the basic 2D patterns such as line, curve, square, and circle. Then, Jeff introduced how to create 3D object like box and cylinder. Meanwhile, Jeff also demonstrated how to use extrude, revolve, and other functions to create new patterns based on these basic 3D objects. Finally, we learned how to use “Create Form” to create symmetric objects. The object I designed is my speaker. I used extrude function to create the control button on my speakers. It looks simple but it will work well. 😉

https://uofi.box.com/s/1wujdb2sq1iyl4c928426teqpej34sbh