avanwest

[avanwest]

Final Project: Shhhhhh

For the final project I wanted to use an old art project I did with a muffler I found on the street. That project was called ‘P.O.S.’ where each color represented the most common letter associated with synesthesia. I always saw the muffler as a snake, though, with the head being the muffler and the long pipe the snake’s body. It even has a tongue!  

The whole purpose of a muffler is to muffle, it’s a silencer. It’s also where the smoke comes out. On one hand I had a vision of making the muffler alive again with smoke billowing out of it like it once did. On the other hand I saw the snake. I needed to marry these two ideas: the actual and the abstract. I decided the snake’s ‘Ssssss’ would be the muffler’s ‘Shhhhh’ via a smoke machine. It was meant to be.  A sound sensor would wake the snake. Smoke would blast the room. There would be silence!

[avanwest]

Final Project: Shhhhh

trials and tribulations below

[avanwest]

Final Project: Shhhhh

Sanded back the paint on the door. I like the details of the writing coming through. Added cut-in-half pingpong balls for the LED eye filters. 

[avanwest]

Final Project: Shhhhh

My backup sound sensor run over by a truck in the rain. (F#ck Everyone!) 

[avanwest]

Final Project: Shhhhh

The paint job: matte black exterior / red interior, red tongue.

[avanwest]

Final Project: Shhhhh

Snaking the snake. 

The first photo shows a piece of rope tied to a wrench socket to pull it down. Took me about an hour of violent shaking to get it to pass all the way through. Guess how long it took before it snapped when I pulled on it? (motherf%&$ing thing!!). 

The second pic shows a chain zip-tied to the extension cord plug I cut and the inside of the muffler painted red. 

The third pic, success!

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Final Project: Shhhhh

After I cut the whole damn thing up to run a cord through it, the plan was to weld it back together around the cord so I didn’t have to worry about it finding it’s way around the angles. What a bonehead idea. The cord would just melt from the extreme heat of the welding, Duh! (Idiot f-ing loser). My friend Jason at Pioneer Works in Red Hook helped me get it back together exactly as it was before. On Mother’s Day morning no less. 

[avanwest]

Final Project: Shhhhhh

Testing the sound sensor with the relay hooked up to the smoke machine. 

[avanwest]

Final Project: Shhhhh

Testing a different sound sensor with the relay and 10mm LEDs. 

[avanwest]

Final Project: Shhhhh

Testing and tweaking the sound sensor. 

[avanwest]

Final Project: Shhhhh

Cutting open the muffler with a grinder. Then cutting it up into pieces thinking how the hell am I going to get the smoke machine cord down around the elbows in the pipe? Big mistake. 

[avanwest]

Week 9: Midterm Project - ‘Smoke House’

For this project I played around with a e-cig vape tank and an air pump to create a smoke machine as a precursor to a bigger project using a professional fog machine and a muffler. The original vision involved a Blynk Board to trigger the machine via wifi, however after many failed attempts to find the right battery to power both the air pump and heat the vape tank, I resorted to using a good old fashioned button on a breadboard, along with two separate power supplies.  A pencil pushes the button and a rigged up awl triggers the vape tank. The next version aims to scale it down further, put it in a tighter, cleaner package, and make it smarter with a wireless button. The picture below shows the insides. Stay tuned for the next version. 

[avanwest]

The blue circle identifies the 12V air pump. The green circle is the vape tank which has a 1.8 ohm coil with liquid vape juice. I used two pairs of lithium 3.7V 18650 batteries, one set that powers the pump and one set powering the vape atomizer to heat up the liquid smoke. 

[avanwest]

Week 7: Digital Buttons with Serial Communication, Arduino and Processing

This is another exercise I did with serial communication using Arduino and Processing, like we did in class. I created a few buttons (red, green, and yellow) in Processing and in the code set the mousePressed function to accept the area on the screen where each button lived. Each button on the screen is tied to an LED on the Arduino of the same color. The program allows you to turn on each light individually, subsequently turning off the previous light. You get the idea... It was just a matter of communicating the right digital pin with each onscreen button. 

[avanwest]

Week 7: On/Off with Serial Commands

This was a simple exercise to see how simple type commands on the keyboard can turn an LED on and off. I plugged the LED directly into the Arduino board. The serial monitor prints out the state of the LED: “Light is on” or “Light is off” for each respective state.  

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Week 3: Input/Output - Temp & Humidity Sensor Module

This week I familiarized myself with basic digital vs analog input/output applications. I randomly inherited a DHT11 sensor from my dad so I decided to give that a shot. The thumbnail size sensor says it has a temp range from 0 to 50 C and a humidity range from 20 to 95%. It takes in 3.5 to 5 volts and a 10k resistor that sits between the data stream and power supply. I dug around online, read forums and blogs and found a DHT library on the Arduino site as well as some basic test code. I had to make some minor adjustments to the code to get the DHT11 version to work and after a few hours of errors and tweaks I got the code to compile and uploaded to the Arduino. Although I was able to get the serial monitor to output data, as of now I’m getting a “Time Out Error” so I’m not getting the proper feedback. I poked around online and found some other DHT users getting the same error. Per the posts after upgraded to the DHT22 sensor they were able to get the proper feedback. Work in progress!

UPDATE!! Turns out I just had the goddamn sensor in the wrong way, worked after I flipped it around (thank you Prof. Woo!). 

Working shot output shot from serial monitor. #hotinhere

[avanwest]

Week 2: Playing w/Switches (Salad Bowl LED Switch)

For the exercise of experimenting with LED switches I wanted to do something incorporating a common, everyday activity such as eating. I used a stainless steel bowl filled with lettuce and a silver fork as the other conductive material to create continuity for the switch. What I thought was interesting is the LED still lighting up in a dimmed fashion when the metal fork was only touching the lettuce and not the stainless steel bowl directly. I’m guessing it’s the moisture in the lettuce that transfers the electrons.