FUTURE BLINDNESS

Well, the flower project hit a snag when the dragon skin I molded turned out to be too thick for the muscle wire to move—in the course of figuring this out, I think I may have damaged/overheated some of the wire segments.

Most of the wire is undamaged, though, and it was easy to retrieve the other wires from the silicone.

Now I’m using a much thinner and lighter strategy involving a plastic flower I got at a craft shop. The downside here is that now I’ve got a shot at making a flower that magically sets itself on fire.

My new form factor also means there’s no inbuilt means to force the wire back into a bent position when it’s unactuated - I’ll have to work out something there once the silicone has cured. It won’t be pretty.

The other bad part: so far, I have not got a circuit working - I initially ordered too few/the wrong parts. Now I’m using a relay from an old robotics project of my brother’s, but I’m concerned about the current drawn by each wire—to get them to react quickly you have to really juice them up, and I doubt my relay can handle the current drawn by 6 of these, not to mention where I’ll find a power source for all this.

The circuit I’ll worry about tomorrow. Tonight I’m not sleeping until I’m confident at least the form factor is correct and workable.

Well, it’s really coming down to the wire here with the flower project. For the next few days I may not be updating as frequently, but I’ll post a final write-up with lots of photos etc when the dust settles.

I have spent too much time working out the mechanics and not enough time planning for the circuitry side of this; I don’t even have a final behavior model yet, so tonight I’ll be hastily curing v2 of my prototype petals and trying to decide what the best operational flow will be, and whether or not that’s feasible. Last-choice scenario is using an Arduino or my flaky CUI board to detect events and actuate the flower.

Meanwhile, my good friend Thenji (a CuriousAV affiliate) has called me in on a film she’s making about South Africa - I’ll be making a small amount of prepared sound from samples she’s recorded. I listened to the first batch of folk instrument samples and they’re quite exciting—mbiras, little flutes, and hand drums are some of my favorite toys!

first results from Dragon Skin test run

Originally uploaded by AKA MEDIA SYSTEM

This weekend I had some encouraging results with Dragon Skin, a silicone molding compound from the pricey folks at Smooth On. Luckily, the silicone we had left over from PS04 was still usable, and it was much easier than I remembered. Some photos of the prototypes are available here.

What I’ll now need to figure out is exactly how to shape the nitinol I’ll be embedding, and how to ensure an electrical connection will always be made regardless of the bend-state of the wire. A journeyman friend is in town tonight but I’ll try to have a more detailed summary by tomorrow.

In the meantime, please have a look at the photos and tell me: how am I going to get the petals to shrivel/contract/close on command and what will have enough force to return the wire to its normal state?

Buddy, last night I fulfilled a commitment I made to a bar in my area. I am not bragging, but I thought you should know.

I have some updates on other projects as well:

I’ll be making more progress on the Cameroon project once I’ve got the dorkbot commitments. Fortuitously, Chelly will be in the States this Christmas, allowing me to push the deliverable deadline back to late December. Shit is going to be bananas at work and getting a grad school app ready, so it is nice to have the extra time (although admittedly, this project has been very slow to gain momentum).

The flower project is going well but will require some real work this weekend making a final decision about the actuators. Either they’re going to be embedded in each petal, which may diminish mobility, or they’re going to be somewhere else and I’ll use monofilament to transfer motion. Using monofilament would be a bit of a defeat, though, since it really obviates the need for muscle wire - I could do it with servos.

Excitingly, there’s a new (and hopefully easy) project that might prove more immediately rewarding—there was a call at the last Dorkbot meeting for an interactive audio exhibit for the kids to enjoy during the opening reception. I’m going to make a small patch of flowers that react to presence and produce (hopefully spooky) sounds. More on that soon.