#brief13

6 minutes, alone, outside.

Take the lock with you outside when you need a break. Breathing into it will heat it up and turn on a pulsating light for 6 minutes. Then it turns off, and you go inside again.

The product

The lock is made out of brass and holds three components inside: a humidity sensor that senses your breathing, a peltier that generates the heat that the brass then conducts over the whole lock, and an LED.

I've used an Arduino Uno board to control the behavior of the lock over time. The code tells it to turn on when a certain amount of humidity is detected, then it turns on the LED that fades up and down, and it turns on the peltier. Over 12 half-minutes I have set what power the peltier should be on, starting at full power for 2 minutes, than fading it down as the metal gets warm. After 6 minutes everything is turned off. 

Background

I wanted to make an experience that I fondly remember from when I used to smoke: those 6-minute breaks you take all by yourself, especially in the wintertime. Just you and the cigarette, and preferably silence. Just the sound of tobacco sizzling and maybe a bird or the wind.

Non-smokers usually don't take breaks to just go outside and stay there, so I thought that having something with you that tells you when time has passed, without being a watch or an iPhone, would be nice. After studying objects that felt good to hold and fickle with, I found that the shape of a lock was quite satisfying. It's solid, has a weight to it, and a loop that you can play around with without thinking to much about it. 

Made by: Andreea Tecusan, design student at AHO (Oslo School of Architecture and Design)

INPUT: Humidity/Breathing

So at the eleventh hour I figured out and tested what the input is going to be on my object: humidity through breathing. The humidity sensor works really well, after breathing on it 2, 3 times with warm breath it peaks at 99,9% humidity. So I'm using this in my code and in my object to activate the object (the LED starts pulsating and the Peltier gets warms for 6 minutes).

This week has been a bit of a struggle, both with the coding and the physical object. I've been trying to find the best form for the object, keeping in mind all the stuff I have to put in it. I've decided to go for a lock-form. It has a big loop that you can play around with, and it makes it easy to take with you and hold it in you hand. And the lock is a nice metaphor;  you go outside to unlock and be "free". 

The coding is tricky because I have to find a way to randomize the power of the heat and light over time. I want it to be random because then you won't think about it. If it's a steady rhythm with regular peaks you might keep track of time more. And I still have the problem of my mosfet getting hot, been trying to get help on the Arduino forum online. 

I haven't decided yet how to actually START the thing, I'm thinking of blowing on it or lighting it with a lighter. Something that makes sense to do to heat up something.

I made a little prototype with an area of brass that you can touch to feel the heat and the little LED pulsates next to it. It's the thing on the picture with wires coming out of it.

Today we had a run-through of our project in groups, really cool to see everyones stuff :) And good to share common frustration around  components that overheat, for example.