Based on the circuits I made in part I, it was time for the week assignment: making a working speaker. This assignment was to be done in pairs. I paired up with Thijs Uffen for this assignment. The first step was to make an amplifier. Components for this were provided to us by the minor. These were: a circuit board, one crocodile clip, four wires with male and female sides, one (...), five wire connectors and an unconnected auxiliary jack. To assemble the amplifier, use the following steps:

1. Using the soldering iron, solder the (...) to the circuit board. Make sure it's soldered at the side with the positive and negative side on the circuit board.

2. Solder the 5 connecting points to the other side of the circuit board.

3. Use scissors to cut the crocodile clip in two and strip both cut sides of the wire so that the fibers are exposed.

4. Screw the fibers of the exposed wire into the (...) that is soldered to the circuit board.

5. Cut the male parts of the four wires and strip them the same as the crocodile clip.

6. Connect the female parts of two of these wires to the circuit board (audio in + and audio in -).

7. Solder the stripped male parts to the two poles of the auxiliary jack. The positive pole is the short one!

8. Connect the female parts of the other two wires to the circuit board as well (Ground and 2-5VDC). Ground is the positive one.

9. You know have a working amplifier! You can check with the Multimeter if everything is connected properly.

With the amplifier working as desired, it was time to design the coil. Thijs and I wanted to work with the vinyl cutter to make our coil. We had chosen to work with copper foil to make our coil, because we had worked with this material before during the making of the circuits in Part I. We already knew this material was conductive and thus could be used in the making of a coil. Thijs used his knowledge with Adobe Illustrator to design a coil with a relatively simple, yet appealing design:

This design could then be uploaded to the vinyl cutter that is located in the Maker's Lab. There are a couple of settings that need to be set correctly in order for the vinyl cutter to work properly:

1. You need to insert the green knife into the machine. This one is meant for copper paper. The white one is meant for normal paper.

2. The cutting speed needs to be set to 80 in/s.

3. The pressure of the knife needs to be set to (...)

You need to insert the material (the copper foil) so that both scanners of the vinyl cutter are covered. The vinyl cutter will then scan your material so it will know the boundaries of where it can cut. Once that is done, you can open CutStudio and import the Illustrator file. Then press the R button in the top right corner. Then you need to go to file -> cutting setup -> property -> get from machine, and press OK twice. The program now has the same settings you put in the vinyl cutter. Press Origin on the vinyl cutter so that the knife will move to its starting position. You can now press Cutting to start the cut.

Unfortunately our design was flawed. There was not enough space in between the different coil windings. This caused the knife to have to cut lines that are very close to each other, which in turn caused the copper foil to unstick from it's sticking layer, which ruined to coil, as seen below:

We tried to increase the space in between the windings, but it was still not enough to make the copper foil stick to the sticker layer. Because of time issues, we decided to abandon the vinyl cutter and think of another way to make a coil. During brainstorming, Loes came to us with a great idea for a coil. It consisted of a piece of denim that is nailed on a piece of wood (I used twelve nails. They are nailed in a circular pattern). You then use copper wire to wind around the nails in the pattern shown below:

Once you finished winding the coil, you sew the twelve nodes of the coil to the denim so you can remove the nails. It's quite a simple design but it looks really cool (and Loes promised extra credit if we used it :D). The two ends of the copper wire are meant to serve as the positive and negative connection (it doesn't matter which one is which).

To know beforehand if the coil would even work, you can measure the amount of resistance the coil has in ohms. The teachers put up a helpful chart that told the resistance of all kinds of material per winding. Our coil would have a resistance of around 3.6 ohms. The ideal resistance lays in between 4 and 8 ohms. That means we could expect our coil to work, but pretty quietly.

Finally, to test the coil, it needs to be connected to a phone, a battery and to the previously created amplifier. You can first connect the crocodile clips to both ends of the coil that you made. For the battery we use a voltage supply. Set the voltage to 5V and the current to 0,250 Ampere. Connect the black wire to the ground wire soldered to the motherboard. In our case this is the white wire. Connect the red wire of the voltage supply to the brown wire. Next, place the coil on top of a carton coffee cup. Let it rest so that the coil sits in the middle. Now connect the auxiliary cable to your phone and play music. Finally hover the magnets that were provided by the minor just above your coil. If you have done everything right, you should hear music.

To our surprise, we heard a very distorted sound. No music could really be identified from it. We tried to find out what happened, but couldn't wrap my head around it. Suddenly, Thijs made the remark that the sound was very bass heavy. I suddenly put two and two together: the music I had chosen was very bass heavy. The amplifier and/or the coil simply weren't powerful enough to translate that to good quality sound. I switched the music to Adele (because why not) and we could hear her beautiful voice quietly, but very clearly. So we knew we had a properly working coil.

An application for the speaker

A speaker like this could be sewn into a small night cap for small children. This could provide them with soft music to help them sleep at night. This could be beneficial for their own development and also beneficial for the parents, who don't need to wake up to help their children sleep..

I was given the following two words: dynamic and static. Immediately I thought about something that moves and something that doesn't move. Although this is correct in theory, translating this using a flat surface material proved to be very difficult. I couldn't think of a way to make paper or carton dynamic and static. So used Google for more meanings of the words.

Dynamic: energetic, expressive, multiple axis.

Static: stationary, similarity of shapes, single axis.

This gave me more ideas to show a difference and gradual change from one contrast to the other. Other than transforming the material from 2D to 3D, there was going to be a gradual change from something boring and symmetrical to something expressive, interesting and asymmetrical. I was going to have to experiment with ways to make this happen.

I was lucky enough to come across a tutorial on YouTube to create a two-part mold in Fusion 360. Thijs shared this tutorial in the Whatsapp group chat, props to him! Basically I followed every single step in this tutorial. The only thing I did differently was the design the object inside the mold. The tutorial used a previously created donut. I chose to make a simple object: an hydrogen atom: two spheres that are connected via a cylinder. Using that instead of the donut in the tutorial allowed me to create my own two-part mold.

The tutorial can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKZx9eHEL6o

We started this week with a tutorial on connecting and debugging circuits. We learned about basic electronic circuits, and the laws that exist within those circuits. Those laws are:

• Kirchhoff's first law: at any given junction within an electric circuit, the sum of the energy coming into that junction is equal to the sum of the energy leaving that junction. Within a junction, no energy can be stored or given away.

• Kirchhoff's current law: the current within an electric circuit is the same at any given point.

• Kirchhoff's voltage law: all of the voltage that is generated must be used up by components within the circuit.

• Ohm's law: Ohm's law can be explained using a simple formula: V = I * R, where V is the voltage in volts, I is the current in ampere and R is the resistance in ohm. Knowing that the current is always the same within a circuit, the voltage and resistance have to be connected in some way. The higher the resistance at a certain point in the circuit, the higher the voltage will be. It's the same the other way around: the higher the voltage is, the higher the resistance will be. If you use the formula to calculate the current (I = V / R), you will only have to do this one time, since the current will be the same at any point in the circuit.

Using these laws, we were given the task to recreate three relatively simple circuits: an LED, an LED with a dimmer and parallel LEDs. First we will discuss the LED.

The image above shows the LED circuit. To make this circuit, I used copper tape (copper is a conductive metal, so energy can flow through it), a 3V battery, a resistor and a LED light. The circuit is completed by folding the folding line so, that both the anode (+) and cathode (-) are connected to the copper tape. You can connect the resistor any way you want using the copper tape, but the LED has a specific positive and negative wire. The positive wire is longer that the negative one, so it can be easily identified. Below shows different images of the LED working.

As shown in the picture above, the LED behaves differently, depending on the resistor that is connected. Ohm's law teaches us that, if the resistance is lower, the current will be higher. A higher current will result in a brighter light (I = V / R). Making this first circuit gave me no trouble. Now let's take a look at the second circuit: the LED dimmer, shown in the image below.

A lot of the circuit shown above works the same as the first circuit I made. A 3V battery, a resistor and a LED light are all connected in a circuit with copper tape. There is however a new component introduced here: a piece of velostat tape. Velostat has a unique property: its resistance changes depending on the amount of pressure that is applied. The more pressure, the lower the amount of resistance will be. The first circuit has taught us that a lower resistance will result in a brighter light, thus making a piece of velostat tape an ideal way to make a dimmer. When pressure is slowly applied to the tape, the light will slowly increase in intensity, as shown in the GIF below.

The last circuit I made is a circuit with parallel LEDs, shown in the image below.

For this circuit, no new components were introduced. The only thing that differs this circuit from the first one is the second LED that is connected parallel to the first one. The second LED however, is only connected at the positive leg.The first LED will light up normally if the battery is connected by both sides. If the negative leg is connected to the copper tape, the second LED should light up as well. However, mine didn't light up. Another law within circuits like these is that the electricity will always choose the route with the lowest resistance. Because I used LEDs with different resistances (a different color means a different resistance), and the green LED had a higher resistance than the yellow LED, the electricity will only flow through the yellow LED, causing the yellow LED to light up and the green to not light up. If I had used two of the same LEDs, it would have worked as desired.

We were tasked with making our own bioplastics. First we had to experiment with different ingredients. We were given some ingredients like glycerine, agar and gelatine, but also we were challenged to add our own ingredients to see what would happen. Lastly, a bioplastic cook book was given to us to get us started. I chose to recreate the Agar Agar recipe from the cook, but I added red berry juice to give the plastic a red color.

Making this bioplastic was relatively easy. Basically all you needed was glycerine, agar and water. The red berry juice was added by my own choice. The amount of agar and water you had to add was constant (1.6 grams and 40 ml respectively), but the amount of glycerine you add would influence how flexible or brittle the bioplastic would be. The maximum amount you could add according to the recipe was 5.4 g. This would make the bioplastic the most flexible it could be. I was a fan of this idea so I chose to add 5.4 grams of glycerine. The amount of red berry juice I added was 20 ml. I wouldn't know what the effect of the red berry juice would be, all I knew for sure was that the color would change. 20 ml seemed like a safe amount to add. I threw everything in a pot and started cooking it. Having a fairly modern hot plate, it was able to cook very quickly. Once there was a lot of froth, I would remove the pan from the hot plate and check how viscous it was.

Once I was ready to pour the plastic into the mold I had created in week 5, I tried to pour it into a small squeeze bottle so I could squeeze it into the mold with precision. When it was in the small bottle, however, it had already hardened and was therefor stuck in the bottle. I had to remove it with a small knife. All the bits are now collected in a small petri dish, as shown below:

I wasn't satisfied at all. Not only did I not use my mold, the material was way too flexible. Not a lot of force was required to pull it apart however. I could not think of any useful purpose for this bioplastic and so I wanted to try again. I cleaned the pot (a challenge in and of itself) and started with pretty much the same recipe. I wanted it to be more brittle. I decided to reduce the amount of glycerine to two grams. This would put it right between brittle and flexible. The amount of agar and water would remain the same. I added a little more red berry juice (30 ml) in the hope it would give the bioplastic a more red colour than before. Upon cooking the pot and removing the pot from the hot plate (the same way I did before), I noticed there was a lot more bioplastic in my pot. This was of course thanks to the increased amount of red berry juice (which also contains water). It hardened a lot less quickly than before. This gave me enough time to ease the bioplastic into my mold and two petri dishes (that's how much I had).

The next day I went to look at my bioplastic. It had hardened quite good. Unfortunately the bioplastic was stuck to the petri dishes and even to my mold. I couldn't remove it without damaging the form. One of the petri dishes even broke while I was trying to remove the bioplastic from it. Nevertheless, the plastic looked good.

However, I was not pleased with the way the bioplastic turned out to be. It was way to fragile and I couldn't find a good use for it. That's why I decided to make a new bioplastic with a new recipe. Instead of making the Agar Agar bioplastic again, I wanted to make the Gelatine Animal Based bioplastic. I did use red berry juice again, because I like the colour red. For this recipe, I needed 60 ml of water, 12 grams of gelatine and, just like the previous recipe, a certain amount of glycerine, depending on how brittle or flexible you want the material to be. I chose for 7.2 grams of glycerine, because I'm more of a fan of flexible plastics. The process of making it was essentially the same. I threw everything in a pot and cooked it. This time I waited a bit longer to pour the liquid in a petri dish. I wanted the liquid to be a bit more thick (like the recipe suggests). I thought this would make the end result a bit less fragile. When I poured the liquid in a petri dish and waited for 24 hours, the result was pretty cool!

I immediately noticed that this bioplastic looked and felt a lot better than the last one. I had to use the toolkit on myself, because I couldn't get a friend to visit me. I didn't think this would pose as much of a problem, because the results would be the same.

Making the first injection mold

The first mold is basically a slab with a hole in the shape of an object. This object could be whatever you want it to be. I chose to make the first mold in the shape of a g-clef. I used both Fusion 360 and Inkscape to make this mold. For this method, I found a tutorial on YouTube by LazerLord10 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0stI95C5Pc). To make this mold, use the following steps:

1. Open fusion 360 and start a new design.

2. Go to create -> box

3. Create a box that is 80mm by 80mm. For the height, go with 10mm.

4. Go on the internet and find a good quality png of a g-clef (we used: https://pngimage.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/g-sleutel-png-6.png).

5. Open the png file with Inkscape.

6. Go to path -> Trace Bitmap...

7. Simply press OK. You have now converted all lines to vectors that Fusion 360 will recognise.

8. Export the file as a .svg file.

9. Go back to Fusion 360.

10. Go to create -> create sketch

11. Make sure you choose the correct plane, in this case XY.

12. Go to insert -> insert SVG. A pop-up window will appear in the middle-right of the screen.

13. Press the small folder-button and choose the .svg file from the location you saved it.

14. Use the arrows to correctly place the image onto the slab.

15. Go to finish sketch to exit the sketch editor.

16. Select the shape as shown in the image below:

17. Press e to open the extrude window

18. For distance, type: -5.00mm

19. You now have succesfully created a mold of your object. You can export your design as an .stl file anywhere on your computer.

Once the designs were finished, we had to print them using the software Ultimaker Cura. In this application, you can import your .stl files. Upon importing a file, you will get a visual representation of the Ultimaker 3D printer. The surface of this visual representation can be seen as the glass plate that is located in the 3D printer itself. Here you can decide yourself where on the glass plate your design will be printed. Since I had four different .stl files (one for the 3D-object and three for the molds), I was worried that I had to perform four different prints. Luckily, Ultimaker Cura allows for multiple files to be imported at the same time, so they will all be printed next to each other. This way, I’d only need to select one file in total to print everything.

Because of the time we had for this assignment, choices had to be made when it comes to the size of the molds and the settings within the application. Below are the settings we used for our print:

When you import the files, they are the size you made them to be within Fusion 360. Pressing “Slice” in Ultimaker Cura allows the application to make an estimate of the time it will take to print the design. With the size the same as in Fusion 360 (8 cm by 8 cm), the printing would take an estimated 16 hours. We did not have enough time for this. So we decided to reduce the size of the molds. This decreased the printing time significantly.

Once you selected the correct settings, you need to export the file to the SD card that is usually inserted into the 3D printer. Take it out and insert it into your own computer to do this. Then insert the SD card back into the printer. From here, select the file from the UI of the 3D printer. The UI is very clear so it shouldn't be a problem to find anything.

Before you can print, you need to make sure the PLA is inserted correctly (polyatic acid is the material that is used to 3D print your objects). Place the roll on the cylinder to the right of the printer. Pull a bit of the PLA towards the small white box behind it. Press and hold the button to insert the PLA at the bottom of this white box. When it's placed correctly, wait for the machine to process the PLA. When it's ready you can press print. The machine will heat up the nozzle before it's ready to go. A bit of excess material comes out first upon starting, carefully remove this.

Unfortunately. our first print failed horribly. The machine had somehow messed everything up. To this day, we still don't know what went wrong. I personally think it could be a case of the machine needing to recalibrate while it was printing our molds. This is just speculation. We tried again and this time everything went well.

We ended up with two very nice molds! We can use these for when we are going to work with bioplastics.

Making something boring and symmetrical was actually kinda easy. During the tutorial, we learned about the different ways the laser cutter can cut your material. There are three cutting modes: SCAN, CUT and DOT. SCAN simply means that it will create a line on your material. It burns the material slightly, without cutting through it. CUT means cutting through the material, very straightforward. Lastly, DOT will create a dotted line. This will create a line that is easier to fold. You can increase or decrease the intervals of dots, making a stronger or weaker folding line. I started with a simple design, using Adobe Illustrator.

The bottom part serves as the boring, symmetrical part, also known as the static part, while the top part serves as the expressive, asymmetrical part, also knows as the dynamic part. I was going to use this design to experiment with the laster cutter. For both parts of the design, I was going to have to think of some iterations that show my progress to the final design.

While I was shopping for blue paper to use in the Riso printer (I was editor that week), I also found a good material for my laser cutter assignment. It's called recycled anthracite carton, and cost 1,50 euro per sheet. I bought it at De Vlieger in Amsterdam.

Dynamic iterations

For the first iteration, I was going to print the design using only the CUT and SCAN modes on the laser cutter. I wanted to see how strong those scanned lines would be. By lowering the laser's speed here, I would be able to create a deeper line, without cutting through it. This would cause it to fold better.

Note: before uploading a file to the laser cutter program, make sure to save your Illustrator file as an Illustrator 8 file!

When you load the Illustrator file into the laster cutter program, you then need to give each lines one of three colours (RGB to keep it simple). You can give different tasks to the different colours. For example: if red is set to SCAN (with a certain power and speed), all lines of the design you made red will be scanned with those settings. If you want two lines to be scanned with different settings, you can add a fourth colour.

For CUT, I used the parameters from the program's library for 2mm cardboard: speed = 22.0 and laser 1 = 50%--50%. I used the standard SCAN settings for the other lines. This is however where I ran into some problems. I wasn't able to change the colour of individual lines. The laser cutter program had somehow grouped certain lines together. Even the Maker's Lab staff hadn't see anything like this before. They recommended I change the colours of the lines in Illustrator beforehand. The colours would also appear in the laser cutter program. I tried this and luckily it worked. From here on you can send the file to the laser cutter itself.

Note: Unfortunately, I am not able to document the precise steps you need to undertake when using the laser cutter. I was planning to note this down after week 4, but before I had the chance to do that, the Maker's Lab closed its doors.

After the laser cutter was done, this was the result:

Because they were scanning lines, it was still very firm and wouldn't bend very well. I concluded that I had to turn these scanned lines into dotted lines. You can do this very easily by just changing the command within the laser cutter program from SCAN to DOT. Adjusting this and cutting it yielded the following result:

I concluded that there are two few dots to even consider it a dotted line. It's not a line and therefore I was barely able to fold it properly. The dots had to become wider. For this, the dot time needed to be longer. You can change the dot time and interval as shown below:

I decided to increase the dot time a bit to see what happens. This was the result:

I noticed almost no difference from the second iteration. It's still very hard to fold these "lines". I needed to increase the dot time even further, which I did. The following came out of it:

These can be called dotted lines! They fold a lot better. I wanted to see what would happen if I increase the power of the laser, the result of which was:

Nothing notable changed here. The increase in power caused the paper to be covered in a bit of smudge however, because there was a more intense burn. Unnecessary! I changed the power back to 13%.

Important!

Unfortunately, this is where the documentation for this week ends. I got by the end of this week and didn't finish the assignment. The plan in the upcoming weeks was to continue working on the static iterations, the final product where the contrast can be seen clearly, and the bounded book. Because the school closed and we were forced to work from home, I never got a chance to do so. I regret this very much, because now I ended up with an unfinished assignment.

The plan was to work on the dynamic design even more; making it better. I wanted the five individual limbs of my design to get hands, feet and a scary face, making it this freaky looking creature. It would be the dynamic contrast of the two: expressive, asymmetrical and 3D. For the static part I would have to experiment with the SCAN, CUT and DOT commands. Using them, without turning the 2D material into something 3D. The result would be something boring and symmetrical. Uninteresting to the eye. It's unfortunate, because I would have really liked to work on the design of the creature. Something to put up in my room or something. I really hope I can bring this idea to fruition in the future, when everything is back to normal.

Reading values using an LDR sensor

In order to start working on my own sensor, I first hooked up the LDR sensor on my breadboard. With this setup, and the code that Loes provided, I would be able to read values that the LDR sensor picks up. The LDR sensor is a light sensor. The values it gives when it is not covered up (e.g. not receiving any light) are different from when it's not covered up. These values can then be implemented in the code so that the LED will light up gradually, depending on the amount of light the LDR sensor picks up.

I set up the LDR sensor on my breadboard and Arduino NodeMCU, as shown below:

I was only going to read the values for now. Looking at the serial monitor and covering up the LDR sensor, I got the following values:

When reading these values, I noted down the minimum and maximum value. In my case this was 189 and 604. As you can see, the values are different in the video above. This is because it was recorded on a different time of day, causing it to be darker, and thus values to be lower. The values are then to be put in the part of the code that is now still a paragraph of comments, as explained by Loes in the tutorial video (link to video).

When I first tried to upload the finished code to the Arduino, I got a strange error saying: "mappedValue does not name a type". I got very confused, and even got some very dark flashbacks to my times as a Computer Science student...debugging is very frustrating. Luckily, thanks to the internet, I was able to find out I forgot to remove an opening bracket, causing the last bit of code to fall out of the void loop. Fixing this caused the code to be able to successfully upload to my Arduino.

I was however very sad to see my LED not lighting up at all. In the process of trying to check every single wire and connection, I got so lost I was thinking about giving up. Luckily I was able to calm myself and carefully check the entire LED connection on the breadboard. I noticed that the resistor wasn't properly connected (or lined up) with the LED. Also the LED to ground connection wasn't correct. Fixing these two issues caused the light to finally work, as shown below.

Here is the code I used:

/*
  created by David Cuartielles
  modified 30 Aug 2011
  By Tom Igoe
  modified 13 March 2020 
  By Loes Bogers
  This example code is in the public domain.
  http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/AnalogInput
*/

int sensorPin = A0;    // select the input pin for the potentiometer
int ledPin = D1;      // select the pin for the LED that has PWM (~) e.g pin D1 on Node MCU
int sensorValue = 0;  // variable to store the value coming from the sensor
int mappedValue = 0;  //store the mapped values

void setup() {

  // initialize serial communication with computer:
  Serial.begin(115200);     //make sure it matches with the number in the serial port

  // declare the ledPin as an OUTPUT:
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(sensorPin, INPUT);
}

void loop() {
  // read the value from the sensor:
  sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin);

//// FIND MIN & MAX RANGE FIRST, THEN COMMENT OUT
  // print values to serial to find lowest and highest values (min and max) in serial monitor
  Serial.println(sensorValue);      // met 10K voltage divider: bijv. range 189-604 zonder een fietslampje erbij (beter voor de video)



     
//PUT THE VALUES YOU FOUND (YOUR_MIN, YOUR_MAX) INTO THE LINE BELOW (line 36)
//put your min value and max value (as seen in the monitor) and map to a range 0- 255 for output
  mappedValue = map(sensorValue, 189, 604, 0, 255); 

    // print values for debugging
    Serial.print("Old Value (no mapping) = ");
    Serial.print(sensorValue);
    Serial.print("\t");   // add a tab between the numbers
    Serial.print("New value (mapped) = ");
    Serial.println(mappedValue);

    // turn the ledPin on using the mappedvalue from the sensorpin
    analogWrite(ledPin, mappedValue);
}

Making a velostat sensor

With the knowledge and code I learned using the LDR sensor (and Loes' tutorials), it was now time to make my own sensor. I wanted to use velostat to make this sensor, becasue I like the pressure-sensitive properties it has. Before I wanted to make a sensor, I wanted to see if I could get any values using velostat. I hooked up a simple sensor, using nothing but copper tape and a piece of velostat.

Opening the serial monitor showed me that, when pressed with maximum force, the value it will give is 1024. When left in a resting state, the numbers jump around a bit, but never above 100. So all I had to do was adjust the values in the code to 100 and 1024, and I should work properly. Unfortunately, this wouldn't make for a gradual increase in light intensity. Instead, the slightest touch would cause the light to light up. That's why I chose to increase the minimum value to 500. The same problem occurred. Then I picked 950 as a minimum value, and it worked! Now I had to transform my velostat sandwich into a proper sensor. I figured out that my simple sensor was the blueprint for a more complex one: it had to be to pieces of copper touching the same piece of velostat, but not each other. That would mean the LED would always light up.

It was time to design my own sensor. Below I have grouped up all five iterations, which I will explain further.

So I started with something simple: a 2D version of my velostat sandwich: a piece of velostat connecting two pieces of copper tape. I first thought a thin piece of velostat would be good because it would use up less material. I quickly concluded however that this would make the pressing area very small and thus harder to use. That's why, for the second iteration, I increased the height size of the piece of velostat, and for the third iteration even the width of the piece of velostat. The third iteration wasn't of much use however, because the amount of copper tape covered is not relevant. The second iteration proved more useful, but this looked an awful lot like Loes' design (sorry Loes!). I needed to do something different with it. I wanted to turn into a 3D sensor (meaning that it could fold). The fourth iterations shows a piece of velostat in the middle with two pieces of copper tape that can fold to the middle. Although cool in theory, with this wired the two wires that connect to the copper tape could accidentally connect because they are so close. That's why, for the fifth and final iteration, I made it so those wires stay opposite each other. This is the result of making this design:

Finally, I had to make sure it would work. So I hooked it up to my Arduino setup and checked. It worked like a charm!

This is the code used for the velostat sensor + LED:

/*
  created by David Cuartielles
  modified 30 Aug 2011
  By Tom Igoe
  modified 13 March 2020 
  By Loes Bogers
  This example code is in the public domain.
  http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/AnalogInput
*/

int sensorPin = A0;    // select the input pin for the potentiometer
int ledPin = D1;      // select the pin for the LED that has PWM (~) e.g pin D1 on Node MCU
int sensorValue = 0;  // variable to store the value coming from the sensor
int mappedValue = 0;  //store the mapped values

void setup() {

  // initialize serial communication with computer:
  Serial.begin(115200);     //make sure it matches with the number in the serial port

  // declare the ledPin as an OUTPUT:
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(sensorPin, INPUT);
}

void loop() {
  // read the value from the sensor:
  sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin);

//// FIND MIN & MAX RANGE FIRST, THEN COMMENT OUT
  // print values to serial to find lowest and highest values (min and max) in serial monitor
  Serial.println(sensorValue);      // met 10K voltage divider: <100 wanneer niet ingedrukt en 1024 wanneer volledig ingedrukt.



     
//PUT THE VALUES YOU FOUND (YOUR_MIN, YOUR_MAX) INTO THE LINE BELOW (line 36)
//put your min value and max value (as seen in the monitor) and map to a range 0- 255 for output
  mappedValue = map(sensorValue, 950, 1024, 0, 255); // 100 voor minimum werkt niet; 500 ook niet. 950 geeft een goede geleidelijke verhoging van lichtintensiteit 

    // print values for debugging
    Serial.print("Old Value (no mapping) = ");
    Serial.print(sensorValue);
    Serial.print("\t");   // add a tab between the numbers
    Serial.print("New value (mapped) = ");
    Serial.println(mappedValue);

    // turn the ledPin on using the mappedvalue from the sensorpin
    analogWrite(ledPin, mappedValue);
}

During this week, I discovered that you can do a lot with an Arduino. It really got me excited to experiment a lot more with this little thing in the future!

For this week I wanted to use the DC motor to program a microcontroller and design a

I started with learning how a DC motor is connected to a circuit. Luckily, Micky provided us with a good tutorial on how to hook it up!

The DC motor tutorial:

I simply recreated this circuit and copied the code from this tutorial into Arduino, exported it to the NodeMCU and voila: it worked!

The next step would be to connect the DC motor to the velostat sensor I created in week 6. I ran into an issue, however. I noticed that, if I removed the resistor and the wire that connects the D1 pin to the resistor, the DC motor would still run when connected. I thought this was strange, considering how I followed the tutorial. NOT FINISHED

With the results of the Material Property Sheet and the toolkit, I think a good application for the bioplastic would be a decorative one. I think with the reflective nature of the bioplastic, they could be hung up in a room against the window. Using other sorts of juice (blueberry juice for instance), you can create all kinds of colours. When light goes through it, it will look very pretty. It's also very cheap to make and doesn't break when dropped, like with glass decorative items. It's a good replacement for the usual glass decorative ornaments.

Sensorial level

Interpretive Level

When Hugo saw and touched the material for the first time, he said it reminded him of those jelly desserts you can buy at the supermarket. He even joked about putting it in his mouth. He also wanted to pull at it to see if it was elastic. To his surprise, it broke with very little of his strength. He thought it would be a bit more elastic. Lastly, he dropped it on purpose to see if it would bounce (it didn't, which saddened him).

Affective Level

The material made Hugo quite happy. He said it was a bit like being a kid again, playing around with something like this. It can't really hurt anything or anyone. He went on to say it felt pleasant, but non-pleasant to hold at the same time. The touch of those jelly desserts is pleasant, but it's still food you're touching. The situations were comparable, according to him.

Documentation

After thinking a lot about the project itself last week (which camera to use and what kind of platform to set up), this week I want to start experimenting more with the actual making of the filters. During the weekly meetings with the entire class, Loes suggested to buy a plexi-glass plate to use as a surface to pour the bioplastic liquid onto. Looking on the internet, these would prove to be quite difficult to obtain. This is mostly because of the Covid-19 crisis. Every store uses these to protect both workers and customers. But there had to be way to, cheaply come into the possession of a glass plate. I then came with the idea to get one from Ikea. They sell their closets in parts, so glass plates are available in separate packages. They also cost around 5 Euro each, a steal!

At this point, I’m ready to properly experiment with making filters. However, there was another thing I have to think about: how will I mount the filters onto the camera? There needs to be a way to use both hands for the camera, while the filter sits in front of the lens. I have a couple of ideas floating in my head, like a wooden frame the lens can slide into, or simply using tie wraps. This is something worth thinking about, but first I want to experiment a bit more.

Because of the shape of a camera lens, the filters would have to have a circular shape. That’s why I purchased some circular cookie shapes from Blokker to use as molds. I hope these work!

After the first experiment, which came out quite yellow, Britt came with the tip to use gelatin sheets instead of gelatin powder. These would provide with a natural, more see-through color. These are easily obtainable at any supermarket. Also, I want to see what would happen if I don’t add any glycerin. The cookbook says that it should be brittle, so I’m curious to see that for real. I also purchased some spices to experiment with: chives and lemongrass. I also still have some red berry juice from the bioplastics week; I want to use that again as well.

Let’s do the no-glycerin recipe first. I did this one with a petri dish instead of the cookie shapes, as I was not in possession of one at this time:

1. Pour 60 ml water into a pot.

2. Add one sheets of gelatin to the pot.

3. Cook the liquid on medium heat for about 10 minutes, whilst stirring with a spoon.

4. When the liquid is viscous, remove the froth and pour the liquid into a petri dish.

While it first looked like this recipe was a fail, it actually turned out to be quite good. It has a grainy effect. This proves you need to give the bioplastic time to reach its final form.

Let’s continue with the red berry recipe. I’m going to add more gelatin sheets than before to see what happens. I’m also going to keep the glycerin, because otherwise the plastic will be too brittle.

1. Pour 60 ml water into a pot.

2. Add 25 ml of red berry juice.

3. Add 3 sheets of gelatin (roughly 9 grams).

4. Add 4 grams of glycerine.

5. Cook the liquid on medium heat for about 10 minutes, whilst stirring with a spoon.

6. When the liquid is viscous, remove the froth and pour the liquid onto the glass plate, into the cookie shape.

Unfortunately, the cookie shapes weren’t completely flat on the glass plate, which caused the liquid to leak from underneath. This also looked like it was going to be a fail, but luckily, when it dried up, it was still pretty usable.

During the class session, Andrei came up with the idea to use UV filters that can be screwed onto a camera lens. These can be cheaply purchased from AliExpress. I immediately ordered them.

Trail of evidence

Sensorial level

Interpretive Level

I really liked the glossy look of this bioplastic. I thought it would be a bit more red, but it's actually got this really nice gold colour! Holding it against the light really makes it even better to look at. The bioplastic reminds me of the sun. I gives me this warm feeling.

Affective Level

This warm feeling I described before is a positive one, of course. It makes me feel like the material is somehow alive; a breathing organism. This is further enhanced by the bubbles that are visible inside the bioplastic. Like small cells of a larger being. It holds a certain mystery. I want to hold it and mess around with it.

Documentation

We can finally begin with our projects! I’m very excited to start fleshing out my idea and starting with my first experiments. I want to use the knowledge I obtained during the bioplastics week to make filters for a camera. These filters will apply effects to photographs. These filters will be made for hobby and professional photographers. They will encourage experimentation and allow the user to view the world through a different lens. The first week will be the week where a lot of research will be done. This is of course necessary to make sure my project will be as good as it can get.

These filters cannot exist without a goal. They need to have a purpose. Photography is of course a very personal thing. Thus, the purpose these filters can have are very personal for every individual. I think a bridging factor is the fact that these filters can add a certain sense of artistic expression. While a photograph without filter can be beautiful, a filter can make it something completely different. You can tell different stories with them. This experimentation with filters is the biggest goal these filters must achieve.

Thinking about my first experiment, I want to make a simple bioplastic and try to achieve a high translucence. I found a paper online that had a recipe for a near-perfect translucent bioplastic, but this needs lab equipment and conditions that I cannot get a hold of. I’ll just use the knowledge I obtained during the bioplastics week instead.

Trail of Evidence - Project week 1

Documentation

During the bioplastics week we were given the ‘Bioplastic Cookbook’, which can be found here: LINK. In this book are different recipes that can be utilised for the making of bioplastic. While a lot of these recipes contain returning ingredients (glycerin and water for example), each recipe has a different main ingredient. Gelatin, agar and corn starch are examples of this. The most important factor of a good camera filter is of course the translucence. Without that, you wouldn’t be able to see a thing. Making a perfect translucent piece of plastic is difficult, but not impossible. That will be my first experiment. I already know agar won’t be used. I found out during the bioplastics week that these bioplastics are not translucent at all. I do still have some gelatin in the house, so I’ll use that.

For the first experiment I just used the basic gelatin recipe that is mentioned in the cookbook. This bioplastic is made as followed:

1. Pour 7 grams of glycerin into a pot (glycerin has a density of 1.26 g/cm3, so if you calculate that it’s about 5.55 ml of glycerin). This way it will be flexible, but not too flexible.

2. Add 12 grams of gelatin to the pot

3. Add 60 ml of water to the pot.

4. Cook on medium heat (I use a induction cooker on heat level 6 out of 10).

5. Stir the liquid with a spoon for about 10 minutes. You’ll notice the liquid will become viscous and a lot of froth will arise. If you have an extractor, turn it on! The gelatin will smell pretty bad when cooked.

6. When the cooking is done, pour the liquid on a flat surface (I used a cutting board for this experiment). Let the bioplastic dry for a few days. It takes a while for the bioplastic to get its final shape.

As you can see, this bioplastic has turned out pretty yellow. This is probably because of the color of the gelatin powder. It does make for a pretty cool effect, but it’s not as translucent as I’d like it to be. I hope further experimentation can still provide me with the translucence I’m looking for.

The first experiment nearly burned my apartment down. I was so fascinated by my first experiment, that I forgot the cooker was still on. The remaining bioplastic in the pot started to burn and the smoke detector went off. Immediately I opened the door to the balcony and let fresh air come in. My neighbors didn’t come to check up on me, so maybe they don’t really care, or they didn’t hear.

I decided that I only want to experiment with black and white images. This way, I can demarcate my project, so that I will not get too distracted during the process. It’s also a personal choice, as I’m a big fan of black and white imagery. I think the lighting in those images is much more effective. I also think effects on black and white are really cool. Sepia is a great example of this.

Trail of Evidence - Week 2

Documentation

The photography is obviously a huge part of my project. One of the questions that Marjolijn (my coach) asked me is whether I wanted to go for analogue or digital photography. I thought about it and both sides have advantages and disadvantages. Analogue photography provides much more detail for black and white photographs, but I would have to buy an analogue camera. I don’t have one right now. I do own a digital camera with a decent amount of memory, which would allow me to take much more photographs. Also, my digital camera is able to take black and white photographs, so I don’t have to manually convert every single image in Photoshop. I’m going to think about this before I make any rash decisions.

This week we also had our first reframing session. This is done with Laura. Every two weeks we sit with her to discuss the progress of our project, what we’re doing etcetera. These sessions are mainly used to regain focus for the project. Otherwise, we might drift too far away from the main goals we set for ourselves at the beginning. Discussing with Laura, she asked about where photographers (the consumers, so to say) could access the recipes I come up with for my filters. This is where the decision was made to think about some sort of platform where people could go to, to find the recipes to make the filters for themselves. This could, again, be done in both an analogue or a digital way. An analogue way to approach this would be some sort of book, where recipes and examples of photographs could be found. On the other hand, a digital approach would be a website where visitors can find recipes and see immediately what sort of effect a filter would have on a photograph.

Just like the analogue vs digital camera question, both options have pros and cons. A book would have to be pressed multiple times, costing more money. It does have the artistic high ground, compared to a website. Holding the photographs physically in your hands sound much more appealing to me personally. I’m going to discuss this with Marjolijn next week.

Trail of evidence

This week it was finally time to test a variation of my final product: a UV filter where the glass has been replaced with a bioplastic made from one of my own recipes. It felt finally excited to test something that I could actually mount onto my camera. It also allows the bioplastic to fit exactly onto my camera lens. This way I can manipulate the patterns on the bioplastic easier as I now know which part of the bioplastic will rest on top of any location on the lens.

To start of you obviously need to be in possession of one of these UV lenses. I ordered this particular one from Subtel. This webshop is based in The Netherlands which allows for fast shipping. They do cost around 10 Euro each, however. That’s why I ordered another 10 (for around 2 Euro each) from AliExpress. Much cheaper, but they take longer to be shipped to my house. Because of time I bought one from Subtel to start experimenting faster.

Once you have a UV filter, you need to remove the glass. This doesn’t have to be done surgically, just use a knife to crack the glass (Use a little caution though, You don’t want to ruin the housing).

After doing this, you need to know which side of the UV filter has the part that screws onto the camera. This side needs to be face UP when pouring the bioplastic liquid into the filter/mold. Otherwise you can’t screw the filter onto the camera anymore, which takes away the whole purpose.

I have decided that for the final product I’m only going to use gelatine sheets as the main ingredient (also glycerine). I don’t think that corn starch and vinegar make for very nice bioplastic. The gelatine ones have always been quite durable. Luckily the bioplastic don’t have to be touched to be used (just as you don’t touch the glass part of a UV filter to avoid scratches and stains).

I have used three gelatine sheers (last week proved four to be too many), a teaspoon of gelatine and 60 ml of water. This gives the bioplastic good transparency and a slight yellowish colour. By now the way to cook this should be clear: cook on medium heat until the liquid gets viscous and allow bubbles to disappear before pouring it into your mold.

While the result looked pretty good at first, unfortunately the bioplastic doesn’t stick well to the plastic of the UV filter. This can be seen below.

Hopefully some part of the bioplastic will stick, which allows the UV filter to be somewhat useful for testing.I need to find a way to get the bioplastic to properly stick to the UV filter. Maybe one of my classmates or teachers has the answer.

I also spent this week testing my existing filters. Using my hand to hold the filters in front of the camera lens, I was able to create some pretty neat artsy pictures. I also experimented with some coloured photos and outdoor photographs. I have not made any portraits yet. Keeping the target audience in mind (hobby photographers) I found out that these filters are ideal for people that don’t want to spend a lot of money on photo editing software. They are now able to recreate some of the effects that a program like Photoshop can also apply onto your photos. Also the analog way these effects are created

Trail of Evidence

Question: what if you could apply your own filters to your photographs?

For years now, professional and hobby photographers have relied on editing software like Adobe Photoshop to make their photos look as beautiful and unique as possible. Before this digital age of still imagery, however, people used analogue cameras that made use of actual filters to apply effects to a photograph. With my Bioplastic Filters, I want to bring us back to this earlier stage of photography. Making your own filters using cheap ingredients found in almost every household is a great and fun way to experiment with the infinite possibilities that the world of photography has to offer.