Aeolus: Final Prototype Presentation

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Yesterday all three groups presented their final prototype. In advance to this presentation we had set a deadline for a user test so we could present the results. Although we had to delay the user test by one day, thanks to some inexplicable electrical problems, we were able to conduct the test one day before the presentation.

Above you can see the setup we tested past Thursday. The boxes were made out of CNC milled wood. Made @ Hyperdody.

The fabric was cut using a CNC Fabric Cutter @ Zeil-Doek BV. It took us two days to sow all the fabric together into 7 inflatables: 6 + 1 Spare. Counting one hand cut from earlier testing we right now have 8 inflatables. We are gonna look into using the 2 extra ones to use in the final installation, in order to give us some more toys to play with.

With the inflatables in one piece it was time to get all the components together to make it all work. This turned out to be a very tedious nightmare. It took us two full days to figure out what was wrong. It’s still not quite clear what made it work in the end, but at least it did.

Final checking on Wednesday. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

At last on Thursday we could conduct our user test. The two video’s below show some footage of that day. It was extremely gratifying to see the installation in a somewhat completed form.

Interactive Architecture in The Why Factory

Aeolus Inflatable Environment Usertest 2

The User test gave us quite a few indications of how to further improve the design:

  • The airflow of the boxes should be improved. The inflatables prevent air from getting in when they are not fully inflated. We aim to integrate a solution for this problem with the design for the box covers.
  • The sensor data is not interpreted optimally. A steady propellor mount should solve some of the issues, but the biggest part is coding.
  • We are going to look into using more Inflatables and a carpet layout that will give us flexibility in the arrangement of inflatables to suit multiple locations.
  • We are going to experiment with sound or lighting inside the Inflatables to exploit the fact that users tend to touch the Inflatables.
If you want to see more take a look at the Aeolus website:

 

Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Modii Grasshopper

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After 3 weeks of die-hard grasshopper scripting it seems that Han Feng and Thijs van der Lely have managed to finish their CAD geometry.

The pavilion geometry consists of 96 cones. Each cone contains 2 cross-sectional construction rings, 192 in total. Where these cones meet each other 422 ribs are put in place. Again, these ribs consist of multiple parts adding up to a total of 1688 components, just to create the connections.

The scripting was done in Grasshopper 0.8.0062 and 0.8.0063 with the use of Daniel Picker’s Kangaroo tool as a circle packer and with the help of Han Feng to make perfect connections for fabrication.

With the help of Grasshopper’s Galapagus tool an optimization was run to create a perfect balance of material efficiency and construction stability.

Overall aesthetic design and construction detail scripting was done by Thijs van der Lely with a helping had of Han for Grasshopper problem solving.

Grasshopper Modii; scripted by Han Feng and Thijs van der Lely

Grasshopper Modii; scripted by Han Feng and Thijs van der Lely

Etching Printed Circuit Boards

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Interactive installations often require electronics and ours is not an exception. One way to produce the needed electronics is to solder all your components onto experimental circuit boards. This means you have to create all the electrical circuits yourself using wire or solder. It’s a great way of making a quick prototype but the downside is that it often results in a chaotic mess that is hard to debug if something doesn’t work. When you’re making one prototype this is not a huge issue but when you’re mass producing the same board multiple times it can get very frustrating and slow you down considerably.

In order to make our lives easier we decided to design printed circuit boards. The first step is to create a schematic of your circuit. The schematic has nothing to do with the physical world but is just a drawing of how all the components should be connected in theory. To make this schematic we used the program ‘PCB Artist’.

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