#makewithmoto

ATAP's Jason and Daniel talk about their trip across the country in a Velcro-covered maker van and how they're applying what they learned from college students to making a phone for 6 billion people. Skip to 2:30:00 for their talk.

[Photo Courtesy of Andrew Hong. MIT Museum. Left to Right. Andrew Wong, Netia McCray (Me), and Leslie Tita]

As part of my dedication this semester to learning as much as I can about prototyping mechanical and electrical hardware, I signed myself up to participate in the MakewithMOTO Makeathon at the MIT Museum.

We spent two days prototyping a storytelling product that interacts with the Motorola Razr HD Smartphone. As a child plays a story on the Motorola smartphone, the storytelling board will flash its embedded LEDs to correspond to certain moments in the story that need special effects (e.g. when the story comes across the word ‘storm’ the LEDs will flash quickly in order to stimulate a storm).

I was proud of myself for getting the hang of Solidworks in order to create the hardware shell on the generously provided laser cutter and 3D printer (from 3D Systems) as well as working on the electronic component of the piece with a touch of programming in the Motorola environment Protocoder.

I also had an amazing team this weekend.

Special Thanks to the MakewithMOTO team, Andrew Hong, and last but not least Leslie Tita for coming up with the project idea.

Now, to start on my homework that I have been procrastinating on for the duration of this four-day weekend.