My project is a simple drawing of a woman’s face. The person interacting would wear the yellow nose patch on their face, and “boop” the painting’s nose, and the LEDs would turn off. This assignment started with a lot of failed trials. At first, I tried to use Electric Paint to build my circuit but then I lost track of all I was doing and ended up over complicating a very simple solution. I ended up using wires and conductive cloth for the switch.
Second Attempt with Resistor.
What’s better than getting a warm hug from a good friend, and also illuminating your home! Or maybe just lightly illuminating a 3 cm radius.
Yes, the hug may have been awkwardly long, but it can be useful in exploring human contact as a way of powering facilities. Some technologies exist that use human work, like biking, to create energy. However, what does our world look like when we can harness simple human interactions to power what we use?
For this assignment, we were asked to create a simple circuit that functions without the use of hands. I completed my circuit using a “skirt” made of aluminum foil. The reason I chose a skirt was because I wanted to experiment with a wearable object. To do this, I added two long wires and connected them to four LED lights. Then, I placed the two opposing wires on the chair, in order to light up the LEDs (and complete the circuit) as soon as my skirt touched the wires. Here is an image of my circuit:
The skirt was a bit too tight, but it worked. Here is a video demonstration:
I’m what the kids call (sunglasses flip down onto my eyes) a huge nerd. Honestly this took me way longer than it should have to make purely because I didn’t have clear tape. But alas, there is nothing that blue tack can’t do. But between screaming in frustration every time the alligator clamps fell off my nose and crying whenever the wire fell off my glasses, I actually got a few cheers in when the little blue light would show itself.
Basically, I wired up an LED and then added a bit of a disruption in the middle. Instead of the electricity going straight from the power source to the LED, it made a quick detour through two alligator clamps, one wire, my sunglasses, my nose, and then to the LED. The wire was taped onto a piece of tinfoil that was on the brim of my sunglasses. The other end was attached to an alligator clamp which then fed into the breadboard.
On my nose was more tinfoil and attached to that was an alligator clamp with the wire that would complete the circuit. Once I flipped my sunglasses from my forehead to my eyes, the LED would light up.
I was inspired by the sport of frisbee golf to make a circuit that is only completed once the user successfully throws the frisbee into the goal. I accomplished this, by fitting a modified cardboard box with broad aluminum foil contact points, and placing a ring of copper tape around the frisbee, so that when the frisbee come into contact with both sides, it allows current to pass through.