Mini Project 2 Process

I knew I wanted to use the barogrpah program sketch for this project, but I was not sure on how to make the best interface for it. I had planned on making a box and filling it with different colorful paper so they would all reflect on each other and just make a nice pretty color combination. But after the incident in Paris this past Friday, I decided I wanted to make my project a tribute piece. Before Friday, I never realized how many people I am actually connected with in France. My supervisor, and one of my really close friends at work are from Northern France. I have met their families, and also built really great friendships through them. Luckily none of their family or our friends were effected by this, but it is still a great tragedy.

To prep for this project, I went out and bought some new materials

I got blue, white and red reflective paper.

And a deep set 8x10 picture frame.

I set the paper to create the French Flag.

                           

I placed it inside the box and built up the sides to enclose it and added a base to hold the wiring. I also rubbed the plastic box with fine sand paper to make it hazy so the lighting would be more diffused.

The LEDs for the barograph sketch are taped to the ends of the cable and bent over the edge of the cardboard then taped to the back of the cardboard to stay in place. Each light corresponds to the flag color. Blue is over blue, white over white and red over red.

Here it is after I first loaded the code into it. It worked fine at first but then the red LED quit working so I had to re-tape it to the cable.  It had gotten loose. Same happened to the Blue led. Before taping the LEDs I thought I could solder them all to different tiny soldering boards. I realized after going through all of that work that they need to be connected to the same ground and negative somehow. So I thought taping them like this would be the easiest. I didnt want to solder them because I was having to adjust them a lot.

I added columns to the bottom to lift it up so it could be more at face level. And I think the columns relate to government architecture and give an idea of lifting France up during this time.

The back is left opened so the IR proximity sensor can be placed at the bottom facing the viewer.

As soon as I placed it in the black box and tried to connect it to the 9volt battery, the arduino quit working. My laptop said it was drawing too much energy, so I had to let it rest before plugging it in again.

Final Video 

The only issue I have with it is that you have to get really really close for all three to light up. I dont think anyone is going to get THAT close to it. They may put their hand up to it. I wish I would have inscribed something in the plastic box so the viewer would want to get close enough to it. But alas, it is already super glued shut.