Orb of Technology hardware prototyping
This is a showcase of my first attempt at hardware prototyping for my project: Orb of Technology. This project was a dumbed down version of an interactive art concept I came up with. The goal of this concept was to show the possible dangers of up and coming technologies through the use of abstract shapes.
Within this project I tried to focus on the hardware part. But before I could start with prototyping the hardware, I first had to get an idea of how the project would look like. I did this by making a simple visualization of what I had in my mind with Blender.
Blender - Visual prototype 1:
To get an idea of how I wanted my visuals to look like I made a visual prototype in Blender. In this prototype I tried to create a general Idea and feel of the way I wanted to orb to look like, move and how people would interact with it.
As the parts of the sphere would be moving outwards from it's centre in a linear motion I would need to find suitable linear actuators for my needs. But due to costs and size constraints I couldn't get off the shelf actuators, so I had to find a way to create my own.
Arduino - Hardware Prototype 1:
For this first prototype I set out to create a linear actuator using servo motors, I choose servo's because they could relay their exact positions back and because the code necessary to run these servo's should be simpler than stepper motors.
Results:
There were a few problems with the first prototype as the servo's lacked torque to move the pieces of the sphere correctly. They would move down faster than they would move up, resulting in wrong timings and positions. Because of these tests I realised that the project required more precise movements and timings.
Arduino - Hardware Prototype 2:
Because of the results of my first prototype I went on to go further with stepper motors instead as they can exert higher torque and be controlled with a lot more precision due to their small steps.
Results: The stepper motors did what I needed from them. This meant I could continue with the interaction of the viewers of this installation
Demo of the moving stepper motors
Arduino - Hardware Prototype 3:
As this project was going to be interactive I wanted to find a simple way to simulate the parts reacting to humans. For this I used a simple ultrasonic sensor that would stop all the movement of the motors
Results:
Due to time constraints I did not have the possibility to further iterate on this prototype. I wished I had more time to learn and understand Arduino so that I could build the sphere and completely flesh out the interaction, but I'm happy with how far I have gotten as this was my first deep dive into Arduino.
