“Subtraction” is the name of a class I will be participating in this semester, where we will explore a variety of materials, and tools used for subtracting from those raw materials. Some examples of tools are hand router tools, the laser cutter and the CNC machine. This week, our homework assignment was to create this shape by using the hand router tool. Look complicated? It’s not! Let’s see how it’s done. Here’s a pic of […]
If you read my previous post, you know that I recently got in touch with my first grade teacher and have started working on a project with her. This will most likely be an archive for kids to share their reading experiences, and view those of others. In building this project I imagine to have a harmonious relationship with Mrs. Mason. We will most likely be making constant iterations, so I see it important to know […]
This is the beginning of one of the most exciting projects I think I will create. A few months ago, I got in touch with my first grade teacher through Facebook and we started chatting as any two people who hadn’t spoken in over 20 years may. Kim (formerly addressed by me as Ms. Blau, and later, Mrs. Mason) asked me how my family was, what I was up to and where is was living. […]
Over the course of the semester, I had the great pleasure of working on a fantastic assistive tech project, in collaboration with the Byun Lab @ NYU and three other partners: Heather Campbell, Helen Carey and Celine Wu. Together, we continued a project which had initially started two years ago, developing a tool for speech therapists and their patients which will help people who have a difficult time pronouncing the “R” sound. In a nutshell, this is done […]
JavaScript was a brand new language for me 7 weeks ago. Up until then, I knew how to read HTML and edit a bit in CSS. Today, I feel a lot more confident both with Markup and CSS, and have a new friend in my development toolbox named JavaScript. JavaScript is great, but not that simple. I find it will take more and more practice until things really start to sink in. So, before I […]
Silophon from Dalit Shalom on Vimeo.
This week (which was our final week working on the project!) we went through some obstacles with the sound. Along the way we had proposed various ideas to each other: How about trying to store the sound files on the Arduino Mega and playing it from there? We tried that but for some reason we were getting an awful digital sound (although the bright side was that there was some kind o communication going on). […]
This week we dedicated our time to working on the final fabrications of the Silophon. We were a bit OCD with our measurements (to the millimeter!) so assembling the pieces at the end kind of felt like assembling furniture from Ikea. We learned to use a lot of scary tools and how to avoid cutting fingers. Here’s a glimpse at our process in the Shop: We started out by cutting the base of our Silophon. […]
This week, we started building and assembling our final version of the Silophon. We started out by mapping, measuring and calculating the sizes of the different pieces we will need to build and construct. After that, we discussed the various materials we would like to use and where we should buy them. For example, we thought the mallet used for hitting the keys should probably be made of rubber and then wrapped in felt. Over […]
This week we setup our circuit, tested the sound and made sure our idea works. Setup How it Works R2R Resistor Ladder The resistor ladder is essentially a series of voltage divider so the input closest to the ground adds the least to the output (it’s the least significant bit), and the input closest to the output adds the most to the output (it’s the most significant bit). Here is a video demonstrating each input individually, […]