Week 8 - Testing the Concept (Group Workshop)

We've had an exciting day today! We hosted a group workshop to test the input and output of the concept that we came up with after Tuesday's discussion. We looked into the Object and the Interface/Prototype Behaviour and decided on technology that could be implemented. We all met at my house with boxes of useful looking things to test the concept described in my previous post.

Gold Christmas Candle Pyramid

To start off with I had a Christmas Candle Pyramid to test our concept on and to transfer the principle to another form.  Unfortunately we were unable to test the difference in speed between a single flame and multiple flames and so an alternative model conceived.

After much thought we constructed a simple frame from which to hang a fan. The fan was sourced from an old computer cooling fan and the initial frame was from a previous project.

 

This is the fan that we used for to test the concept. A cotton thread was tied to the central pin to allow it to spin relatively freely. This type of fixing caused difficulties with balancing the fan so the pin was removed and the thread attached through the remaining hole.

Fan with pin in place

Fan with pin removed

Initial attachment of cotton thread

Improved attachment of cotton thread

Initially the fan was attached to the frame using a light weight cotton. Other materials such as fishing line and stronger cottons were experimented with however they provided too much twisting resistance. However I have made a new frame that sits directly over the shield so that I can more easily make adjustments to the system. The initial attachment method exagerated the wind-up issues that we were having in the first place so I made adjustments to it to simulate a continuous frictionless bearing.

Having ensured that there was minimal resistance to twisting I was then able to properly test the behaviour of the interface that is to become one of our major outputs.

The following video demonstrated how the fan can spin up according to the number of flames and the amount of heat that is being generated.

As you can see in the video the use of one flame begins the rotational motion of the fan at a slow pace. As more flames are added under the fan it begins to rotate faster and as the flames are taken away it rotates more slowly. The major problem with this mechanical system is that there is still an issue of wind up in the cotton thread (also noticable in the video). 

We also made another discovery in terms of the ability to control the direction of the fan. We found that the direction of the fan depends on where the flames are drawing oxygen from. If the shield has a gap at the bottom the air rises causing the fan to rotate in one direction. If there is gap at the bottom the flames draw oxygen down into the shield causing the fan to rotate in the opposite direction. It was interesting to note the speed of this change in direction alsoThe following video demonstrates this discovery.

Returning though to the issue of the resistance against twisting. We looked at designing some form of frictionless bearing however we decided that this would require lubrication and maintenance to keep the bearing frictionless. It was at this point that I remembered seeing a magnetically levitated globe and how it rotated continuously without friction to slow it down. A quick search revealed the Stellanova Magnetic Levitating Globe that suspends a globe with an embedded permanent magnet under an electromagnet.

Another quick search revealed that this can be achieved with an arduino circuit and programming! Looks like we have a winner!

This circuit uses a Hall Sensor to control the levitation height. I will be looking into how we can get this working for the prototype so that we can demonstrate the concept. Not only does this solve our twisting friction issue, it also gives us an interaction interface that is easily performed by the user.

Here are some form sketches of how this interaction and outputs could be designed into an object. The concept now uses a circle of gas flames encased in a glass shield below a magnetically levitated fan. We have also identified the need for separate flame to signify the users being logged on themself.

circle of flames + individual

Based on this new concept the sketch below maps out the required prototype to demonstrate the workings of the product.

Now that we have a product with a particular input and output we were able to roughly map out a narrative for the everyday use of our product. Below is the draft narrative:

Below is a fleshed out narrative that Kahlia will work through to ensure that the product input and outputs match up with the senario requirements.

And now, a list of the things that I need to work out for the prototype and to be able to asses the interaction and behaviour of users with the specified input and output.

Today's group workshop was certainly productive!