My MAD Portfolio

Mad Shorts is a series where I will be doing quick and easy experiments that you can try yourself with minimal supplies. This Mad Shorts Episode I make a tea bag fly with the power of heat and pressure.. Do this experiment at your own risk, these videos are intended as educational use and I can not be held responsible for any injury or damage to property.

This video I made on the spot at the request of a friend.

We were given about an hour to create a pitch with a supporting poster and video to present to a judging panel including members of the council. 

If we try to solve a problem with only one solution, one person, or one organization it has a high chance of failure. If we solve a problem with a lot of different solutions, diversity, and angles through different people and organizations; The problem will have a greater chance of being permanently solved.

What makes a system or a technology interactive? In this presentation, I answer this question and cover some examples.

Mad Labs is a series where I will be doing a variety of experiments and projects, focusing on science. I will be showing ways to produce things from other things as well as fun experiments to show how mad science can be!

On this episode of Mad Labs, Silverleaf joins us to extract essential oils from orange peel using steam distillation.

Short Version:

Extended Episode:

We made a window into the viewer's brain, literally. We wanted to make a way to show emotions and stresses in a physical tangible object. We made a window with a storm projected onto it. The storm represents your stresses and angers and when you are mindful and calm these emotions the storm also calms.

This was a long project, but, it went fast! I’m glad to say its at an end but I definitely had some fun making this with the group, all of whom I didn’t know at all before this project started. A lot went wrong and could be better but overall I am happy with the outcome.

Our work was predominately developed due to our research into dangerous conditions and testimony from experienced firefighters. We found convincing evidence from multiple countries that there was an existence of issues that our product could help to prevent, including in many cases, the loss of life. 

We decided to create an all in one sensor that could be used to keep yourself from walking into a wasteland that would likely kill you. However, as New Zealand would probably be largely unaffected due to low military/strategic value and its remoteness to the rest of the world, for us to develop such a product we would need to target industries who go into dangerous environments as part of their work. This allows us to develop sensors for the specific purpose they are needed for which would be done following the agile design structure for maximum efficiency and productivity. 

Based on our research and evaluation of the market space and advantages of our product we concluded that it was worthwhile continuing development of our product. The fire department has agreed to consider our proposal to trial our product. Our current prototype proves that such a device is feasible. The next step is making it a consumer-ready product.

Links: http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/… http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationn… http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/1…

Special Thanks to: Senior Station Officer - Steven Callagher

Prototype 1:

Advertisement Video:

I was tasked with interrogating an inanimate physical object through creative means. I was also told this should have some sentimental value to me. I decided to interrogate a rose quartz crystal that my great granddad gave to me before he died. After some editing this is what I came up with, all of it is the crystal.

The color scheme I was going for was Vivid Pastel colors. I feel this shows both the true meaning of the rock to me, while also standing out more. I wanted to try to show emotions by the use of reds and purples. The asteroid about to strike represents how powerful a rock can be and the beauty of it.

Video made for Don's application to become a school representative.

This program estimates the value of pi surprisingly accurately, it uses a piece of statistics that states the probability that two random numbers will be co-prime.

Domestic violence is a huge issue across the globe. I hope this video can serve as another voice speaking this problem, making it more known to the general public who don’t see domestic violence as a problem. Also for people in such a situation, I hope this video can show them to an escape or at least be another thing that adds up to an action.

Video:

In this project struggled to find an instrument that hasn’t been built before, it seems experimental music is a lot bigger than I thought. That I solved by just making something completely bizarre and unheard of, like a piano out of wet tissue paper. The performance also raised its own problems, My Instrument needed quite a bit of work to be performance ready. Both in software and hardware. Overall I think this project went well even though the performance is a bit hard on the ears.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this project and learnt a lot.

First Prototype:

Finished Prototype

YouTube video on finished prototype coming soon

Performance:

I learned a lot in this project, from recording high-quality audio to putting it together to making it. However, some parts of this project I did struggle with. before this project I did not know what a soundscape was let alone how to make one, I had no idea what it should or should not sound like. I tried to solve this by going and listening to a lot of soundscapes to see what they had in common and thought they are a lot like background music like you would find in a game or movie.

The Soundscape:

A card game I made to help electronics students learn about logic gates.

“Climate change is causing reduced rainfall and increased droughts, which bring about issues regarding the viability of the global food production system, including cocoa. With climate change comes unstable weather patterns causing more droughts and changing temperatures.”

Point of sale system coded in python for a circus. Calculates the day's profit/sales and supports multiple types of tickets. 

We came 1st in our division and 2nd overall for the vex robotics competition in 2016. I made the adjustments to the firing mechanism that made it work moments before we were due to start.