ARGHH!!!

BUSY BUSY BUSY I AM!!!

So far I'm not doing too bad. After many failed attempts at sewing (yes sewing...because I can sew...) on the head material I found a winning result by attaching strings made of double thread to the material and then tying them together very tight to have the material wrap right over the head completely. The end result is awesome, looks so much better now being a bulb of a plant rather than resembling the remains of the old dinosaur i started with. As well as that I have made me some more leaves like I did the other day, looking good and coming together. Can't wait!

Final Round!!

Going to be a very busy day today as 371 has stolen a huge amount of time off me having to write the essay and it has put my robot behind schedule a fair bit, didn't manage to spend any time on it over the labour weekend. No time to waste though, lots to do... for my reference:

TO DO LIST:

1) Attach Head Material
2) Make Leaves
3) Make Dirt
4) Find 9V battery to power plant instead of USB cord. Solder pins to it.
5) Make a new piece to hold loose motor part so it wont jiggle and cause the motion to break.
6) Ground Vince (plant) to pot base.
7) Assemble!
8) Adjust thresholds
9) Film!
10) Make documentation - Don't Forget, 600+ Words as well as video!!

Time is almost up!

Tomorrow is the last work day to complete this project. Scary stuff, it has come so so quick!

Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of spare time today and had none in the weekend damn it! After finally completing the 371 essay it was 5pm and I had work at 6 so I just did some soldering and wire stuff. Had to increase the length of wires on the motion sensor so that I can have it on the outside of the pot of the plant rather than up close to the arduino as I have had it for testing purposes. In doing so this would put the motion sensor inside the pot for the final robot and that wouldn't achieve much results!

I also went down to the workshop before it closed at 5.30pm to drill some wire holes in my base.

Wired Up! But Better :D

I changed my original setup using the transistor and instead I have now followed suit like others are doing and gone for using an H Bridge. This allows me to add a little more complexity to my project as I can play with the motion a lot more this way. I have implemented a threshold system now so that Vince (the plant) will react more or less dependent on the amount of movement. Changes to the movement include speed and direction. He now moves slower and faster and moves his head both left and right. Yus! Gotta love it when things go right :D

Bread Board:

Arduino:

Leaves....Oh so beautiful leaves!

Decided to take a break from the electronics side of things and take a look back at the aesthetics of my plant. I found this nice papery material at home that I though might work wonders for my leaves, it had a nice texture to it that I thought well suited. Bonus to this is that the paper is green as well, score!

On its own it looked kind of boring so I decided that I would use a similar technique to what I did on the polar fleece last weekend.

This was the better of the lot:

It created this sort of veiny look that is perfect for leaves. So looks like I've found my way of making them, stay tuned!

Past couple of days...

I have been in the workshop downstairs making the base for my plant to sit on when "planted" in the pot - which I had to get a new one... damn thing broke in my bag. Got me a nice terracotta one instead, much more durable and I think also looks a lot better. It being a proper pot also adds to the realism of my plant which is good. Wasn't that expensive either which is a plus!

Anyway back to the base, what I am doing is creating a chamber within the pot which will be where all my electrical stuff will go. Then there will be a lid to this chamber to cover it up which is the base for my plant to sit on and leaves to slot into. Yesterday I got the base cut out, took me ages as I got the measurement for the inner circle of the pot wrong. The circle I cut was too big and I had to reduce it but not by too much otherwise the lid would just fall through the lip within the pot that I want to have it sit on because its at the perfect level for my plant to make it seem like its "planted". Today I shaped the base a lot better and drilled the necessary holes for the leaf stalks to stick into and for the wires on the motion sensor and the wires attached to the plant to go through and to the circuitry/arduino board within the pot.

Slight Progress

Not much time today as I had to meet with my tutor for 371 and I also had work. In the little time I did have though I did some soldering and wiring stuff... am getting a lot better and faster at it now which is coming in handy. I also made my head piece to the plant using the fold and slightly heated technique I played around with in the weekend. To attach it I'm thinking of just sewing it on putting the needle through the holes in the ex dino skeleton head. Should work... I hope!

Wired up!

Finally got the basic setup of it working and the little motor running nicely in the ex dino. Needed a resistor because the on/off operation wasn't happening properly and you could see it on the LED on the arduino board. On it would be on and OFF it would be dimly lit.

Materials For The Head

Talking with Tiago recently the thought of what to do about the head came to subject. I had originally intended on making some sort of plastic mold to go over the top but wasn't really sure how to go about it. Talking to Tiago gave me a lot of ideas and I decided I would make the head out of material.

The material I went for is this polar fleece sort. I remembered playing with it back in first year for the materials paper and how you could create all sorts of surfaces just by applying different techniques so I had a bit of experiment:

All experiments:

Soaked and Burnt:

Layered Melting:

Folded and Slightly heated

Hardcore Burning:

My favourite two out of these is the soaked and burnt one (sbo) and the folded and slightly heated (fsh). The sbo one I could see as a potential use for the leaves of the plant. the fsh one I think is the winner for the head. The folds are quite representative of a flower and the many layers that are within one, especially with petals.

Naughty Andrew!! - Progress so far :)

Woooow... I have been neglecting my blog, sorry!!

So what's been happening? Well I shall fill you in..

Originally I was thinking of doing something that would be in hysterics. In looking at that I had thought of making some sort of creature - yep another one, it's what I do! and have it spin and/or throw its arms around. However, when asked to bring in some materials by Doug to begin making our robots, I ended up taking a trip to the Warehouse with Regan to see if I might find something in the toy section. So I did. On some sale shelf there was a dinosaur toy made by Playschool? I can't remember but it had a really nice movement to it. Operated by a button press, the toy would raise its head, snap its mouth while roaring and then after a bit of a delay would return to its rest state. Around the time of finding the dinosaur I had decided to make a plant creature as opposed to an animal as it was something I hadn't done before and we had been looking at plant behavior in class and especially after watching the plant video in class I got really inspired to make one of my own. The type of movement in the dinosaur toy made me think of a venus fly trap which has now become the basis of my project. At the moment I have been able to strip down the dinosaur - skinned it, detached its limbs, removed unwanted body features (eyes, horns) and Doug and Tiago have been giving me a lot of great help in rewiring its movement to act via the arduino board rather than the button. I have learnt a lot about transistors and how they work. Really interesting and a lot more fun to come I think so stay tuned, I will be updating this from now on!

Project Two

We are now into project two, yay!

For this one we need to create a robot that expresses some sort of human psychology, so some sort of emotion. I'm thinking I might look at something hysterical perhaps, really wound up... A modified Taz perhaps from Looney Tunes? I'm not sure, will have to have a good think.

Finished Controller

Thought I'd just quickly post up a couple of pics of my controller which is now fully functional and all assembled. Yay!

Whole Controller:

Switches: Can you find the sweet spot?

Controller Update

Well it turns out the initial wiring I did previously was completely wrong. Had a talk to Tiago on how to fix it. My main problem was that I had it all wired through only 1 resistor and so only one of the buttons would work, I think I also had it grounded a little wrong. Anyway with a bit of tinkering Tiago and I got it going, we also had to change a value in my code. Strangley one switch is set up the same as the others so that it is off and you need to turn it on for anything to happen but when the controller is operational, for some reason this switch thinks its turned on and so you have to turn it off for a result... its rather confusing but at least it now works. Time to seal up the controller so its all contained in the one unit, then I can move on with the last of my code and refining/finishing my animations.

Controller Componentry

Here I have linked up the arduino to my controller. Looking pretty good. Have got it talking nicely to arduino, now I just need to get it to talk to flash.

Building The Controller

Today I decided I would make up the the controller for my project. Controller you ask? I have changed my original idea of making a switchboard to instead creating a controller. The main reason being that the switchboard was intended for use with pressure sensors and since that failed to happen due to time constraints, it seemed silly to continue with this idea. I thought that a controller would be better suited. The panda is a tye of experiment that was intended for human control upon its completion. So it makes sense to have a portable controller that can be used to manipulate it.

After playing around with the little switches I got from Mindkits I decided that it would be best to change from these smaller ones to bigger ones. 1) They mount onto the breadboard which I want to be on the inside of my controller and 2) They are all the same. I wanted 3 different switches that 1 from each set of 3 would initiate some reaction (animation) from the panda. I took a trip down to my local Dick Smiths, bought myself some new stuff. Managed to get some sweet silver switches for only $2 each, pretty sure they are worth $6 each. EDIT: they were worth $7! For the controller box I am using a empty container box I found in Dick Smiths. I was going to build one myself from wood or something but that tends to take way to much time. Cutting out, measuring, painting etc. So not into doing that, and this looks much more solid and more in keeping with my story as it is properly engineered rather than looking like something from a kids homework project.

THE PLAN:

Plan is to have the box hold my arduino etc. Will cut out a slot for the usb port in one of the sides to achieve this. Then on the top will be a series of 9 switches however only 3 of these will do something. It's a bit of a game, find the sweet spot to make the panda happy. Hit the wrong switch and well, you'll get a different result. For these "wrong" switches I have decided that one will put him to sleep, the other will bring more discomfort to him.

Panda's Show of Emotion

Biggest part to this project is the show of emotion. On our trip to the Zoo I was very interested in not only how the animals behaved and reacted to their enviorment but also how we as humans would interact/react with the animals. This idea was the foundation to my project so It's extremely important I get it right. I am relying on the panda's emotion to capture an audience's attention and get them to feel for him. So to ensure this happens, I have drawn up a range of different panda heads, each with different expressions so that I can translate the required emotions in my animations and across to the audience. With the emotions I have drawn them with regard to the reading we did recently. When happy, the panda has its ears pointed, when sad or distressed, it pulls them back. Then I have the change to the mouth, frowning to portray sadness, opened to portray distress and smiling to portray happiness. The lines around the eyes are also included as you can see to better communicate the required emotion.

Ice Panda - Illustrated

Progress with my character! Have taken my ideas from sketching into illustrator and knocked this little guy up. Looking pretty good. Not a fan of the image of him sitting up though, I think when it comes to animating him, I will keep him on all fours.

Sketches of Ice Panda

Need my character designed already! Soo I have gone nuts with trying to sketch an idea of him up. Enjoy!



More Heads:

Sorting out the Switch

Been looking on the net to sort out how to make up a switch with the Arduino. Got it working eventually with this setup:



Will keep this for reference for later just in case I forget how I did it.

Finalized Idea

After doing a bit of thinking I have now settled on an idea that incorporates my red panda animal as picked last post after going to the zoo. Basically the idea is that my character is a genetically modified red panda. Scientists developed him as part of a project titled "Ice". They wanted to see if they could turn the red pandas weakness into a strength. Red Panda's cant stand the cold so they developed one to be able to live in these conditions with ease. Unfortunately those in charge pulled the plug on the project and the lab was shut down, the panda abandoned. Now the poor little guy is stuck lifeless within what's left of the lab. He can't leave as he needs to stay within his ice enviornment. If he were to leave he would die. But he is also not doing so well as he needs to be kept charged up as he was never finished to the point where he can live and cope on his own. This is where the user input comes into play. They see the panda on screen, very dozy, suffering. In front of the user is a type of switchboard that acts as the controls of the panda. If the right areas are pushed - and held, panda will jump start and come back to life, happy. If the wrong areas are pushed though, this wrong combination will unfortunately hurt the panda and you will wind up increasing his suffering. If nothing is pushed at all and you leave him be just as the scientists did, then panda will continue to try get up and move but with no energy, collapse.

Development of Idea

First things first. I am going to change the chestplate idea with the regulator in it to some other form that still controls its health and needs powering up to do so. What I don't like about the chestplate idea is that its quite similar to Iron Man and I want my idea to be something original not something out of a comic book just altered slightly so that instead of man its an animal. So I will get to work on designing that and put up another post soon.

In regards to the creature/animal, I was initially going to go with some sort of turtle but now I'm not so sure. Going to the Zoo today I got to see a lot of animals and how they react to things and how they express themselves as well as their emotions. While turtles are cool - saw them today swimming around just doing there thing, they aren't so much an animal that you can really feel something for from first glimpse unless you alter it and take a different approach by making the turtle into some sort of cartoon like turtle and sort of humanize it so it looks cute, however I am not so keen on this sort of idea. Todays visit to the zoo has made me realize I'd much prefer to keep it as somewhat realistic as I can so that whatever this creature or animal is, the audience can relate to it easy enough and I can create some sort of bond between them early on rather than having them try and understand what this fake creature is and what not.

The animal I am interested in looking at now is the Red Panda. I had a good watch of them today at the Zoo and what I liked is how they quite liked human attention. When I got to the enclosure it came running up, sort of like a bit of a greet. It's also small and fuzzy which is pretty much the equation for cute. So it would be a good fit to my project, likes and would want human attention and then when healthy they are quite interesting to watch, running around letting curiousity get the better of them. So that is where I am at now, I may look at making some sort of hybrid animal to make it a little more interesting but if I do this I don't want to go overboard. Minimal alterations and additions I think would be the best way to go so that I don't get an awkward or confused response.

Initial Sketches of Animals

Have been sketching out some ideas for animals that my character could be. Want to run with something an audience will find cute. With this in mind, been looking at a little bear and turtle. No idea why but these two just sort of came to mind. But yeah, here's a look at some sketches:





I seem to favor the turtle... :P

Beginning Concept

Right so it has been a couple of days since my last post and I think I have a good starting point for my project. I am going to play around with the emotion of compassion. My idea is to have some sort of animal familiar to people and one that you could find I don't know.. cute? or loveable? and that animal is damaged. It has a chestplate with a regulator in it and this when charged allows the animal to be OK, it can live. However when not charged, the animal then becomes lethargic, dropping to the floor and look as though he is dying. To involve the audience with this a-life character it will be on them to keep him alive. They will need to apply pressure to some sort of device which I will design later and this will bring the character to a state of well being. Obviously they will not want to stand there forever keeping this character alive, but can they let go and let the character suffer? How long might they stay for? How much compassion will they feel for the poor little guy?

I will now do some sketches of ideas for my animal. Post again soon!

Initial Thoughts

I like the idea of manipulating some sort of emotion to create my a-life project. From talking with other people in the class it seems the sort of darker emotions or feelings are quite popular, things such as fear or pain. I'd like to stay away from these darker ideas, but play off something that will enhance the relationship between the a-life creature and the user or audience. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of this is to create something in which the audience can become attached to, something that perhaps they will melt over or feel sorry for. I'll keep thinking about this and next post I will have an idea to develop.

Project One: A-Life

Aim: To create an organism that will somehow be affected by chosen sensors.

Factors: Organism itself, enviornment it lives in.

Not quite sure what I am going to do for my project however after todays lesson I have a better understanding of what it is the arduino can do and the sensors that can be used along with it.

Quite like the idea of using photo sensors and pressure sensors. Will spend the next few days coming up with a solid idea. Stay tuned!