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!