Week 9 Progress

Goals for Week 9:

Have main room transformations made: test which fabric we want to project on, fabric hung, room shape custom to how we want it
Fix bug in code: when phone is removed, the p5 sketch stops and is ready to be actuated again
Refine enclosures: embed circuits inside, add drywall mud, repaint
Make 90% slide deck

What We Accomplished & Learned:

Refining Enclosures

Now that we know what space we are building for, we were able to take measurements of our room and build longer wiring systems for all of our components. We worked in the BTU Lab to solder 5 sets of extended wires for the Neopixels and the power supply.

Meanwhile, Elsa refined the paint jobs on our enclosures, using drywall mud to make the phone slot and control panel unified forms. We still have to re-paint the phone outline onto the phone slot, but you can see the improvements in the pictures below!

We used drywall mud to smooth out any irregularities on the surface of our wood. Then, we sanded off any excess drywall. We also sliced off any hot glue that was sticking out from when we constructed our laser cut wood pieces. Lastly, we added a few coats of white paint!

The next step was to map out our circuitry onto a solderable protoboard that we could use to make our control panel enclosure more permanent. This took significantly more time than we expected, but after quite a few hours in the BTU lab, we got our circuitry all done!

p5 Sketch Improvements

Here is a link to our final p5 visualization! Now we just have to replace the visualization that we currently have running in our room with this one. It is 5 minutes long, that has the capability to stop and restart when the phone is inserted / deleted. We may play around with color values still as we finish off setting up the room and the projector, but otherwise it is good to go!

We are happy with how the color transitions work when users switch out RFID pebbles, and the textured walls look very nice with the animations.

Room Setup

We were so excited to move into our new room and start building everything out! First, we moved all of our components into the room and started putting up our LED strips.

Next, it was time to start changing the shape of the room by building wire structures to bevel the corners of the room and allow for a dome-shaped roof. We wanted to alter the shape and feel of the room to help the user feel that they are entering a different sort of space, and not just another meeting room in the ATLAS building. We used the wire grids to form curved structures in the corners of the room, planning to hang paper off of the wire to form new “walls” of the room.

Then, we started actually attaching the paper to the walls. We crumpled the paper to give it a more interesting texture and make the room feel more organic.

We didn’t completely finish creating our paper walls for this week, but we made it far enough to prove the concept and test out our projection on the surface. We are really excited to finish completion in the coming weeks, and refine all of the small details of the room to perfect the user experience!