This week in class we continued to work on our projects. As I am focusing on the electronics of the vertical garden, I continued to work on the Arduino and visited the Fab Lab on Monday in search for an Arduino WIFI shield and a little help on how to use it. Unfortunately, the Fab Lab did not have any WIFI shields for me to use on our project. I did speak with one of their experts on small electronics and he did suggest that I use a specific Arduino that can connect to the internet without the need of a shield.  After asking him a couple questions about the Arduino I found out that it has only 1 Analog data input which would not work for our project as I would need at least 3 or 4.  He then suggested that I could potentially connect that Arduino to the Arduino Uno that I am using and connect to the internet that way but in the end we agreed that it would probably be too complicated in the short time I had. I then decided to connect the sensor to a series of status lights as a temporary solution and I will attempt to set up a 3 digit display that will show the status of the vertical garden. I am also working on an issue with the LED lights flickering a little when the soil moisture sensors are triggered. I am confident I can figure out these issues with the Arduino in time for our final presentation.

Prototype Testing Picture

In class we also evaluated 2 other group’s projects. The first group’s project was the adaptable steering wheel attachment. Overall I really liked the progress they had made and attachment really felt like it would attach to a steering wheel well. I did give them some advice on testing the strength of the clamp. The second group we evaluated is working on a people counter. I ended up spending a good amount of time helping them out with their Arduino and showed them how to connect their motion sensors to the Arduino in order to make sure that they work. That group is also working on getting a 3 digit display to work so we will be sharing any successes that we might have.

Feedback

This week in class, we were able to share our product idea and prototype with other groups. Many people had a hard time understanding what the practical use for our product was because it did not have a clear distinction between existing pour-over coffee filters, but once we explained how we wanted to make the pour-over coffee filter more autonomous, people understood how efficient our product could be.

Once our product idea was understood, many people gave us feedback about the safety of our prototype. Since our product was fully plastic, people did not know if boiling water would be safe. We explained that our prototype did not have the aluminum sheets that we hoped would insulate and cover the plastic parts of our product.

Another piece of feedback that was consistently given to us was how there was not enough control on the user’s end to how long the coffee grinds would be brewed. We agreed, and in order to change our product, we decided to add more “slots” that could be interchanged with different sized holes to control how quickly the water would drip.

The last piece of feedback that we diverted our attention to was how the base of our structure was designed. Since the legs that held up our coffee brewer was too close together, we found out that most cups were too big to fit between the legs of the brewed. In order to fix this issue, we made another print of the base with legs that were a lot bigger, but a lot further apart from each other. While we are trying to make sure that the product looks aesthetically good, this was a temporary fix in order to let cups fit.

Future

Our next steps now include plating our entire product with aluminum sheets to cover the plastic parts. While we are trying to figure out ways to check the safety and health hazards of our product, we are looking for new materials to insulate the boiling water from the plastic parts.

We were able to get in contact with the FabLab and found that they had a laser cutter that would allow us to make precise cuts to aluminum sheets. Our next steps include making these sheets to cover the entire product to make it look more aesthetically pleasing. Afterwards, we plan on giving our new prototype to our two testers to see if there is any improvement in their feedback.

This week was extremely beneficial for the Money Makers. We were able to make more progress on our final project. Our first prototype did not print how we wanted it to. The screw holes were not proportioned correctly and the bottom was squished. We printed a new prototype with the screw holes at exact measurements. Then we decided to drill the drain holes into the bottom because this will give us more control over placement and size. The next day we saw our prototype and it printed perfectly. The next steps in our project are to get the light detectors to work. Norman, who has been the mastermind behind the sensors, got the light to work. But we need to use a code so it works according to the plants needs. I am looking forward to making more progress next week.

Also this week we were able to meet with other teams and hear about their progress. I really liked this because I saw how far other teams have come and hear what set backs they have had as well. Both groups we met with gave positive feedback about our vertical garden. This gave us a lot of confidence in our project.

I found this interesting article about electric scooters in California. They are made for people to rent and use throughout different cities in California. They are a way of transportation, but also a fun time to feel free. There have been problems with people dropping scooters on sidewalks or in the street. This chaos and clutter is causing a lot of issues with people. Check out the article to learn more!

Another successful week in class working on our final projects! This week we met with two other groups and gave and received feedback on the initial prototypes we have made. The first team we met with was the group making the people counter for businesses. Their current struggle was configuring the code to count on a three digit LCD screen because it was currently only counting for a single digit LCD screen. Unfortunately, we were not able to give them much help, but we did give them feedback on what we would like to see out of the project and what we would want if we were a small business owner deciding to buy their product. They also gave us some good feedback regarding our project. They like the open source idea which allows users to adjust the height of the legs to their own liking. They also suggested looking into the Teavana steeper which we could potentially use similar technology for our project. Another suggestion they had was to make sure we have enough material to cover the parts that will touch water so the plastic does not leak toxins into the water or the water doesn’t melt the plastic.

The next group we met with was the group making the smart plant holder. They were trying to figure out how to make the hose split into two at the top of the stand to allow both sides of the object receive equal amounts of water. We also posed the question of if plants on the lower end of the stand will receive enough nutrients since the plants at the top of the stand will soak up most of the nutrients. Their idea to combat that issue was to put plants that do not need as much nutrients on the bottom of the stand to ensure a longer survival. We also received feedback from them which included looking into making the legs into a tripod formation. We will consider this as one of our iterations of a prototype and see which one users enjoy more. Overall, the meetings were very helpful and we will take into consideration the feedback we received from both groups.

In terms of next steps, we plan to get material to line the water reservoir so the hot water doesn’t touch plastic. We will also make the slides out of this same material since the water will flow through them.

This week, my team made great progress in our final project. Although we had a slow start, I think our idea for earbud attachments is simple, yet effective. We wanted to create something that everyone could make and also use. Printing these attachments takes less than 30 minutes. Also, we figured out the dimensions for small, medium and large attachments. We have an app that allows us to compare your ear to a quarter, ultimately figuring out what size ear attachment you would need.

Although we aren’t completely and totally “customizing” an earphone attachment for each individual, we market it as such. This has the customer believing they are getting something customizable, creating more value for the product (that’s business for you!).

During class, we tested our product on a couple of our classmates (with all different ear sizes). Our classmates seemed very pleased by the product and said they wanted us to print them a copy! One problem we ran into was the clip was to loose and was falling off the string of the earphone. So, with our final project, we must figure out how to make it flexible enough to hook around the earphone, but not too loose where it falls off.

Overall, this week we made great strides in our project and I am looking forward to finishing it all up!

This week’s session entailed printing our initial prototype of our earphone clips and receiving feedback from fellow classmates through a design audit. I was simultaneously excited and nervous to see if our print would be successful, considering that we had to model it in a relatively short amount of time. We used Fusion360 to create the initial design and I’ve included a photo of the first iteration here.

The earphone clips were roughly a 20-minute print, so we are now focused on marketing this as an experience for students to easily participate in. One point of feedback we received from Vishal was to utilize some photo measurement mobile application that would allow users to send us a photo of their ear, and then we could automatically use the measurements from the app to determine what size clips they would need. We were able to find an app called Ruler that allows users to take pictures of various objects and then compare them to the scale of various objects like credit cards or US quarters to determine the actual dimensions of the object. We are still testing the accuracy of this app across various conditions, but if it proves to be successful, it would be a great way for students to print their ear clips without needing to set foot in the MakerLab.

I was quite happy with the first version of our ear clips. Here is what they looked like on my teammate Jason, who was busy at work. They were surprisingly flexible, so we agreed to increase the nozzle size (from 0.4 to 0.6) as well as the layer height to make the final product more durable. Through our design audit with various other teams, we also received the feedback to make the clip-on portion of the product tighter so that it won’t slide off of the earphones. We are also looking into creating clips that will work for non-iPhone earphones, given that our base design worked quite well. I’m looking forward to tweaking our model some more, and testing our prototype with various volunteers over the weekend—I’ll be sure to provide updates as it all starts to come together!

This week’s class period was greatly beneficial in terms of progress for our team! Getting other teams’ opinions and suggestions has opened up our minds more to the potential problems that our team was previously unaware of. We first talked to the Coffee Pour-Over team, whose prototype is coming along very nicely. Their idea is to make the next prototype a little bigger so that a coffee cup or even a coffee pot can fit underneath it, and also print their filters from metal so that hot water can be safely poured over the top. Their project fixes seem to be much simpler than ours, unfortunately. We explained to them that we were having difficulties with our code and wires to connect our three-digit 7-segment display. What happened is that we were following the instructions for a 1 digit 7-segment display (a display that can only show numbers 0-9), but we wanted to use a three-digit display (because most businesses will get more than 9 visitors in a day or at a time). Since the instructions we were following only were for a one-digit display, it wasn’t working properly for our three-digit display. Some of the segments were lighting up, and dots next to the segment were flashing when we used our push button (which we were using in place of the sensors at first, since it was what was used in the instructable). The Coffee Pour-Over team had a good suggestion about storing data- they suggested that we add a way (eventually) to store historical data from the sensor including date and time. In this way, businesses can keep track of and analyze how busy they are on certain days and use data to plan inventory purchases and scheduling; we thought about how a lot of our friends on campus who are bartenders have to be “on-call” and ready to work but we thought this could be reduced or eliminated based on better estimation of busy days and times.

After that, Money Makers came over and Norman changed our world. After trying for a bit to help us get our digits to display better, he suggested that instead we move straight to testing with our PIR sensors- as Chelly pointed out, the push button method (which we couldn’t even get to work properly) could be accomplished with a hand counter used by the person working the door, and thus wasn’t that useful. Norman helped Scott attach our two PIR sensors to our Arduino and helped him find and adjust code that would change to say “motion detected on sensor 1” and “motion detected on sensor 2.” We are much more hopeful that our project can come to life in the way we imagined it, especially if we can capture the historical data. We are going to keep experimenting with it before next week, so hopefully we will have more to report by then.

I was unfortunately not able to capture a picture of the code saying “motion detected” because I didn’t think quickly enough, but I did manage to get pictures of where we were at before Norman’s help, which I have attached as a flickr link.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/organize/?start_tab=new_set

This week in class, the entirety of the class time was put towards continuing our prototyping. The article we read in preparation for this class was helpful. Before reading it, I had thought of prototyping as more of an “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” method. While this is definitely part of it, the actual prototyping process includes a lot more than just continual testing. The article explained how you have to have actual test subjects. This can include friends and family, people at trade shows, and even people you find on websites such as Craigslist. Not only do you have to think about who you want your test subjects to be, but you want to make sure that the testing environment is the right environment for your specific test- perhaps you need a full laboratory, or else you can simply do the test in your office. These and other things should all be taken into consideration before testing and updating the prototype.

My group has not yet found test subjects, but has definitely gone through some initial testing. For our people counter, we haven’t yet received the LED number board yet, so we attached single LEDs to our board and Arduino in order to see if we were on the right track. We essentailly wanted to find out if our code worked and would correctly tell the LEDs to light up when the “count” went up. Since the sensors are a little difficult to set up, we tried out a simple push button with the lights instead this week- and it worked! We would push the button and the light would shine. It wouldn’t work on every light all the time (we attached 7 LEDs total), so we are going to be working to find out why that is, and working to find out how to substitute the number board for the LEDs and the sensors for the push button. One last thing we would like to try to figure out is whether or not we can use the sensors to add and subtract people from the count based on the direction they pass the sensors.

Below I have attached the link to pictures of our work in progress LED “people counter,” as well as some of the more intricate parts used in the making of this project. The little bead looking things are resistors, which limit the flow of electricity in the circuit.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/157284563@N06/albums/72157665836306417

Last week I drafted questions to be asked during the prototype testing portion of the project. I specifically worded these questions to address the most basic assumptions of our hydroponic design. Reflecting on this exercise, I realize that I was also critically thinking about other design options 3Dream hasn’t fully considered. This class has already evaluated prototype designs during Week 5 with the Design for America Team. One important takeaway that I believe to be applicable is avoiding group confirmation bias. The similar views that I share amongst members of my group have skewed our collective judgment. Product prototype designs are tested before commercialization to reduce the effects of confirmation bias.

This week’s reading provides the guidelines for effective prototype testing. There are multiple variables that must be controlled, or the findings may be misleading. Those variables include: finding proper test subjects, defining the usability tasks, the interview questions, the test environment, and finally updating the prototype. I believe this final step to be the most critical because it relies on personal judgment. Assuming a prototype test is properly conducted, it is possible the findings will not initiate any design changes. Worse yet, the results could spark design changes that retrospectively fails. It is difficult to gauge the sometimes widely ranging test subject expectations, which is why reviewing the results is both a science and an art.

After reading the article and having aspects of design on my (hopefully open) mind, I headed to the store in search of hardware materials for the hydroponic drip system. I got a PVC pipe connector, a T-joint to hang plants from, and a measuring bucket for the base. I am currently designing a stabilization device on Fusion360 to firmly anchor the 5-foot PVC pipe in the center of the bucket. Since this piece will be 3D printed, I will easily be able to implement any feedback I get from the imminent prototype testing.

To conclude this week’s post, I wanted to promote the upcoming Design for America spring expo event being held on campus. They are awesome people working on local projects that you can check out here. The slides from the Week 5 Design for America presentation helped inspire me when thinking about prototype testing questions. Designs have a meaningful impact on how we interact with the things around us, and for the creative people in the world, there is always room for improvement.

Until next week.

Prototypes

A lot of what we learned for class this week involved prototypes. Different questions that were answered were: What is a prototype? How do you develop a prototype? What should be the minimum requirements for a prototype? Many of these questions were answered by use cases that highlighted the functionality of prototypes.

Coffee First Prototype

As a group, we were able to make our first steps for our coffee pour-over tool project. Finalizing our pour over assistant design, we decided to separate our products into two parts: a top funnel for the water to travel down, and a lower space holder for the coffee grinds.

The way we constructed the top funnel was compartmentalized into two slides. The top slide has several larger holes that makes water easily slide drop through. Right underneath this slide, there is another slide that consists of holes that are significantly smaller. With the addition of the two slide system, the user will be able to determine how fast water drips into the coffee, which determines the strength of the coffee.

An early problem we ran into was determining how our product would be a universal fit for all cup sizes. To avoid this problem, we made sure that our product would be easily editable by any one who would want to print it. Hence, the bottom part of our design, which has four different stands, are easily editable.

Another problem we needed to address was how the 3D printed material would react with boiling water. While we are still working on this issue with the helpers at the LabLab, it seems like this is an area where a lot of discussion takes place.

Planning Ahead

This week, my group plans on going into the FabLab and trying to print various prototypes that will address the boiling water problem. Need be, we will most likely order different printing material that is durable to hot water so that toxins are not leaked into the coffee.

If our slide system does not happen to work out the way we want, we will most likely try to come up with another system that allows users to control how fast water is seeped into the coffee grinds because we believe that is a foundational function of our desired product.

Overview

For my Once a Semester activity, I have decided to explore the various 3D food printing machines and applications already in existence. Food printers, over time have progressed to create very intricate designs by combining several different nozzles with lasers and other technology. There are many different companies that have tried to enter into this competitive landscape so in this post I will discuss a few companies and the machines they designed. I will then talk about the various applications for 3D food printing and finally a look into the future and how this can and will impact future markets.

Natural Machines- Foodini

This printer is capable of making both savory and sweet foods with fresh ingredients loaded into the cartridges depending on what the user wishes to create. The main purpose Natural Machines had in mind for this machine was to make food preparation more manageable and promote cooking with fresh ingredients. Like many of the new machines in the 3D printed food industry, these machines are manufactured in small batches and cost $4000 USD. There are two main target audiences for this product, the first of which professional kitchens with emphasis on the art of food and the aesthetic appeal of a gourmet meal. Their other target group is home users. Natural Machines believes that this may become a common kitchen appliance similar to a microwave or toaster oven in the future. This can be used to make fresh foods fast and by hand thus controlling each of the ingredients. Their goal is to help replace packaged foods and candies thus controlling the unidentifiable ingredients in food and reducing packaging waste.

BeeHex- Chef 3D

This company was based off of the 3D food system that was developed for deep space missions for Nasa. The current CEO of BeeHex headed the Nasa food printing initiative and therefore expanded and improved upon the initial design to create the Chef 3D. The idea for this food system is to make home creations more commonplace. Like the Foodini, this printer is designed to create desserts as well as savory foods. It has a specific attachment for toppings in order to distribute evenly for items like pizzas and pies. This is targeted mainly at commercial users in order to provide a unique food creation experience within a restaurant. It can also be utilized to optimize diatary needs based on personal body and lifestyle if purchased for in home, personal use. Currently, this printer is not on the market, however the company has received funding to expand their “personalized” pizza business so that soon customers will be able to order a custom made/ shaped pizza through an app and have the machine manufacture and send it to them. This company has a lot of potential and I look forward to keeping up with what they do!

 ByFlow- Focus

This printer is optimized for desserts and to experiment with various textures and shapes of food. This printer allows users to create new food designs that would be near impossible to create by hand. This is appealing mainly for specialty shops rather than everyday customers. It utilizes syringes for the ingredients and thus they must be available in liquid form. Out of the box, the Focus printer comes with 10 refillable cartrages, 4 nozzles in 2 different sizes (to create various different designs) and 5 prepared food designs. This machine costs 3,300 € and is much less versatile than the Foodini.

3D System- ChefJet Pro

This printer is primarily focused on dessert creations similar to the ByFlow Focus printer in that it appeals to a niche market. This machine is different in the fact that it works by crystallizing thin layers of fine-grain sugar layer by layer to create different shaped candies. Interestingly, there are 2 versions, the ChefJet monochrome printer that can be purchased by anyone for $1000 and the ChefJet Pro for $5000. This is primarily aimed at pastry chefs and professional kitchens looking to create unique desserts that are easily duplicable

Machine Overviews:

I have mentioned several of the major players in the food printing industry currently. 3D printing with food is a very new idea and therefore there are several startups focused on similar ideas. With the research that I have done, I believe that BeeHex will be one of the most successful companies since they have over a million dollar in seed funding and several potential business routes to pursue.

3D Printing Food Applications

As mentioned above with the various machines, there are several purposes for 3D printing food. Several of the machines currently in use are for gourmet professional kitchens to set them apart from others with their unique and perfectly designed creations. These applications mainly are used for cakes, chocolates and desserts but can also be expanded into main entrees. There is currently a restaurant in Spain that uses the Foodini to print seafood purée into intricate coral shapes and decorate the plates with.

Other than gourmet applications, 3D food printer systems are being utilized by NASA currently to print vital nutrient rich food in space that can keep for up to 30 years (unprinted in the canisters) for longer missions. Additionally, food printing systems are being utilized in the nutrition sector to assist people who have very particular dietary restrictions. Being able to easily print all of their food opens up many opportunities. Finally, there are companies such as Modern Meadow that are exploring printing bio-materials such as meat in order to eventually replace the meat that we eat today. Currently all of these applications are being developed and still incredibly expensive.

Future Implications and Opportunities

Being able to 3D print food may provide an opportunity to solve many of the hunger and food waste issues currently around the world. Some companies are using “ugly” foods to put into cartridges and create new life for fruits and vegetables that otherwise would be undesirable. Other researchers are looking into algae and other nutritional substances that could be used as a base or glue for printed food. Finally, if 3D printing food becomes more prevalent, we may see a shift in grocery stores. I imagine this shift would be similar to bulk food sections in some grocery stores although would have printer cartridge filling stations will all sorts of different ingredients already prepped for the machines. Overall, I see this as a fascinating industry with potential in many areas and look forward to watching it grow!

Unfortunately, I was too sick to come to class this week. However, my group and I got together today at BIF and The Fab Lab to coordinate and work on our project. We first met in BIF to decide if we do in fact want to switch our final project idea and if it would be feasible. After a lot of thought and research, we decided our solar powered coffee cup warmer wasn’t feasible. Although our switching costs from one project to another may be large, we eventually came to the conclusion that it would be in our group’s best interest to do so.

So, we put our heads together and eventually came up with the fact that air pods (the new iPhone headphones) easily fall out of ears of users. We then decided to create a customizable ear piece that would attach to the headphone and also the ear, allowing the headphone to stay in the ear and not slip out!

First, we researched the best way to fit it into the ear, how to attach it to the headphone and also how to make it customizable. We believe this could be a super easy process for students. They could come into the Maker Lab, get the height and width of their ear and print their customized attachment. This is a simple problem and an even more simple solution that could help a lot of people with this inconvenience.

We had a little trouble coming up with the initial design and had to explore things on Fusion that we had never used before. However, we can up with a basic model that we will be printing tomorrow and testing out on volunteers for specific fits and sizes.

I am happy my group could get together and figure out the new course of our final project! I believe it will be a successful one and I can’t wait to see our prototype tomorrow.

This week we spent time working on our projects. It was extremely productive as we moved farther along in process. Vishal had us focus on printing our prototypes. We designed our vertical garden on Fusion. It was hard deciding how big to make the garden and we knew we needed a few parts. We uploaded it in to Cura and it said it would take over a day and a half to print. We adjusted our measurements to a smaller size. Instead, we printed a version that was 4 inches by 3 inches. This sample allowed us to get a good idea what it would look like. The printing job did not start off too well. The drainage holes would not stick to the printer. Then the holes for the screws were too big and ovals. We saw immediately that we needed to make a few adjustments. As the printer kept going and layer started piling on the garden looked better. The drain holes were sticking and it grew into the right shapes. I am happy that we had this time to print because it gave us great direction.

Norman also made great progress this week with the soil moisture sensors. He was able to get the sensors to send signals to the monitor. When I put my finger on the sensor I saw how the temperature increased. We will have to do further research about soil temperatures to decide when to alert the owner that the garden needs to be water. I am excited about developing this project.

I enjoyed reading the article this week regarding prototype testing. I think it has very relevant information with our current projects. It talks about updating your prototype by identifying the problems. We clearly identified problems with our screw holes and need to fix this. I think showing other users our prototype will give us valuable information about how to improve our project.

The article I found discusses 3 considerations before prototyping, which I thought could be helpful. Check it out!

https://www.stratasysdirect.com/applications/rapid-prototyping/3d-printing-prototype-considerations

This week was an incredibly productive week for our project. In class we were basically given time to work on our projects with an emphasis on beginning to print parts of our prototypes if needed. Luckily my group already had a good amount of the top half of our vertical garden done so all we had to do was add some holes to screw the top piece so that we could mount the top to support beams. In a matter of minutes, we were able to upload that segment of our design and uploaded it into Cura where we decided to print a half size prototype due to the fact that a full-size version of just the top half of the vertical garden would be over a day and a half to print. The print itself started off rough as the material would not stick to the platform for the drainage holes we had in our design and it got messy. Fortunately, after a couple of layers the plastic started forming the circles good enough so that we let the print continue. Our other big issue we had with this print was that we did not scale our design properly and our screw holes ended up looking like ovals. Obviously, we will fix this in the final design but for now we will use washers to attach it to the rest of the prototype.

Picture of Arduino setup

I also had a lot of time to work on the electronics for our vertical garden and figured out how to hook up both soil moisture sensors to the Arduino and was able to get them to send their signals to the serial monitor at the same time. I then got to work on setting up the logic required that dictates when the sensor will print or send a signal to the Arduino only when the moisture level gets to a certain point. I was able to use simple logic to create an if statement that prints the moisture level if it hits a certain point but ran into some issues as I tried to add that logic to the second sensor. From my research on the problem it looks like I can’t have both sensors active at the same time and that I will have to program it so that they operate one at a time. Even after finding out this potential solution I still ran into some issues but I know that it is all code based and that the hardware works as planned. I have also figured out a way to connect the light sensors to the Arduino and will be working on that as soon as the soil moisture sensors are working properly. After that I will focus on using these sensors to send a text message to the user.