#ahointeractiveproducts2015

A summary of the last five weeks:

In the last five weeks I’ve been working on a product for this brief:

http://ahointeractiveproducts2015.tumblr.com/post/132141183826/inventing-interactive-products

Short summary: Make an interactive product using Arduino. It must have one input and one output and be put in a context. I decided to work with marketing as my context, and interactions between people. In particular hugging, witch I think is one of the friendliest and most delightful interactions between people in the world.

What I essentially did was to make a “hug-o-meter”, It’s a machine that measures how good a hug between two people are, and that gives a instant visual feedback (the arrow) on how well the hug was preformed, and also a reward if the hug was sufficiently good.

The build was rather simple. A large poster(left in the picture) with a scale for reading the hugs’ value, and a measuring device(right in the picture) witch was to be the center of the hug.

The reward in this case was two pieces (one for each participant) of chocolate covered biscuit, that also provided the marketing context for my project. Manufactured by Freia, “Sjokoklem”, witch translates to “ChocoHug”, is one of my favorite biscuits. Fortunately it’s very poorly marketed and fitted well with my idea for the hugging machine, witch in turn made it a good choice of context.

I posted the code I used for the Arduino earlier.

The components I used for the input was two pressure sensors, witch feedback together calculated the value of the hug. This was so that one person less easily would max out the scale. It worked brilliantly, To reach a good score, pressure would have to be applied from both sides of the “hug-o-meter”.

For the output I built the instant feedback arrow from a servo engine. I would also have liked to make the chocolate ejecting mechanism, but it proved too complicated in the short time between user- testing the experience and prototyping for the exhibition.

Regrettably I was too preoccupied with handing out rewards and tending to som unforeseen complications during the exhibition to remember to film people using the machine, but the response was good. Especially when two full classes of fifth- graders came to have a look at what our course was about.

A summary of the last five weeks: 

In the last five weeks I’ve been working on a product for this brief:

http://ahointeractiveproducts2015.tumblr.com/post/132141183826/inventing-interactive-products

Short summary: Make an interactive product using Arduino. It must have one input and one output and be put in a context.  I decided to work with marketing as my context, and interactions between people. In particular hugging, witch I think is one of the friendliest and most delightful interactions between people in the world. 

What I essentially did was to make a “hug-o-meter”, It’s a machine that measures how good a hug between two people are, and that gives a instant visual feedback (the arrow) on how well the hug was preformed, and also a reward if the hug was sufficiently good. 

The build was rather simple. A large poster(left in the picture) with a scale for reading the hugs’ value, and a measuring device(right in the picture) witch was to be the center of the hug.

The reward in this case was two pieces (one for each participant) of chocolate covered biscuit, that also provided the marketing context for my project. Manufactured by Freia, “Sjokoklem”, witch translates to “ChocoHug”, is one of my favorite biscuits. Fortunately it’s very poorly marketed and fitted well with my idea for the hugging machine, witch in turn made it a good choice of context. 

I posted the code I used for the Arduino earlier. 

The components I used for the input was two pressure sensors, witch feedback together calculated the value of the hug. This was so that one person less easily would max out the scale. It worked brilliantly, To reach a good score, pressure would have to be applied from both sides of the “hug-o-meter”. 

For the output I built the instant feedback arrow from a servo engine. I would also have liked to make the chocolate ejecting mechanism, but it proved too complicated in the short time between user- testing the experience and prototyping for the exhibition. 

Regrettably I was too preoccupied with handing out rewards and tending to som unforeseen complications during the exhibition to remember to film people using the machine, but the response was good. Especially when two full classes of fifth- graders came to have a look at what our course was about. 

Here is the final code including the servo for opening the shield underneath the ice. I basically added the shield just to prevent the user from pulling the fish straight up instead of actually fishing it like i wanted. 

Under I´ve drawn up a sort of storyboard of how i want the interaction to develop from start to it`s end. 

Underneath i´m using the final interaction. I´m really pleased with the result and that I actually stuck to my fishy idea, that I really started questioning after i started it.

Back to the beginning i really wanted to create an experience that already exist and I figured I actually managed to recreate the ice fishing scenario and put it in a different common environment. I enjoyed working with this project because it took me so many places of prototyping and figuring out things in different ways that i probably would have slipped if i did´nt put myself in this fishy “situation”.

The Icefishingsimulator gives you the whole experience without stretching so far. You´ll even get a fish! Try to hook the fish when It tugs on the line. If the rod is flexed as much as needed you got the fish hooked. In a few seconds the hatch will open underneath and the fish will come wriggling out of the water. Slightly brutally but you can even wait for for it to die like the interaction itself or you could hit it hard like you normally would.

Started same day making the final fishing rod. To make the reel i needed to be a little creative, so I figured I rigged up my own shaper by using some clamps and a dremmel. 

Mounted the modified crab fishing rod into my own rod. Drilled some holes trough the end to get my 5V and my signal wire. Really took some time to get all the wires trough the rod on the inside, but that´s what´s looked best. I like turning both wood and different foam, cause the results are getting as intended. 

After solving the issues on the flex sensor and how it should react on my given force, i brought some good stuff from the rods that I`ve already been completing. I figured it would be a whole lot easier to just get a rod out of glass-fiber that would bend and not get bent permanently. The green one that i got here is just a cheap crab fishing rod that I´ve did some modification with to get what i wanted. Quick prototype out of white styrofoam just to get some perspective on things. Did not work to good though, cause the material itself is way to light and i probably need some weight in the fishtail to get the right kind of movement that i want.

This is the other rod were I´m experimenting with a stiff rod and a sandwhich contruction to get better readings from the flexsensor. Working pretty good, but it´s hard to get it goodlooking, and in this construction the top acrylic piece will get stretched when the rod is bent, which will cause a rapture in the the link between my GND and 5V wires and the flexsensor itself. I´m thinking of replacing the acrylic pieces with something that´s behaves better when being bent the way i want. Rubber coming up! 

Further on i needed to make some new fishingrods to give me some proper readings from my flex sensor. The one underneath i´ve implemented the flexsensor in the handle itself to se what kind of readings i would get when flexed or not. Did not give me to much as the density of the cibafoam is way to high to be flexed when the diameter of the handle was at it´s most reasonable for actually holding it like a fishingrod.