Last Day! 4/3

    In class on Thursday, we added some final touches to our book and presented it to the class. I was pretty happy with the final product, though there were definitely things that I would have liked to spend more time on. I recently watched some senior MAS and CAMS theses and there was a documentary about a studio art major. She perfectly articulated something that I often feel. She said that when she is creating something she envisions making a five-course Thanksgiving dinner, but ends up making a turkey sandwich and some jello. To some extent I felt that way about our book. I wish that we had had more time to focus on the aesthetics, but it was more important that we work on the actual engineering parts, since that was the assignment and the purpose of this class. Here are some pictures that Erin took of the book:

The lights flicker when you pull Hedwig past the candles

Mrs. Noris's eyes glow!

These pictures change when the characters either put on the invisibility cloak or take the polyjuice potion

Not the best picture, but the lights are either red or green depending on whether you went to page 4 and turned off the lights or not

    The other groups' final projects were very impressive. Cailey and Maria built a circuit that lit up when you snapped your fingers or made a noise by it. Essie and Frances made a box with lights on four sides. The light on bottom of the box was the light that lit up, so different lights turned on as you rotated it. Their design was nice because the way that the battery connected to the LED was cleverly simple, like Cailey and Maria’s lantern. I should learn from them, as I tend to overcomplicate things.
    During this project I learned something that I probably should have already know about myself.  My interests lie more in applied arts than they do in engineering. Something that pains me to admit, since I was hoping I could turn my passion for making things into a stable career path. While I like to know how things work, what I really enjoy is the actual process of just making something. During the process of making the book I really wanted to visit the book arts lab in the Clapp (literally the coolest place on campus) and learn about book binding and typesetting. But I realize that this has little to do with engineering, even if it would have made our project look cooler. I am glad that I at least have a base knowledge of how circuits work, so that I can possibly implement them in future projects, and I am still interested in learning more about Arduinos and microprocessors. I am glad that I learned how to use the laser cutter, but disappointed that I still have not gotten my hands on the 3D printer.
    I will leave you with one last link! Disney has created a new device called Touché that turns any surface (even liquid!) into an interactive surface. Of course, I don’t really understand how it works, but it has something to do with capacitance sensing. The video explains that most capacitive sensing operates at one frequency, so it can only sense if the user is touching or not touching. But Touché measures capacitance over a range of frequencies, so it can tell if the user is touching, pinching, grasping or not touching. Some of the applications seem silly or far fetched, but I do like the idea of using you body to control you phone or ipod. I just wonder what happens if you make an unintentional gesture. I think Touché is definitely something to watch, I am just surprised that it did not come from Apple or Google.