So, social design. Making something safer. We live n a very safe and coddled society. We all want to live to 100 but we also want to be able to smoke and eat fried chicken. Life has risk, life is risk. for instance, we are all aware of  how dangerous cars are and how easy it is to walk in front of one or nod off and slide into the other lane. The obvious way to improve road safety is to have everyone only use public transport. . . But that sure as hell isn't going to happen.

For this project I started by observing everything and anything that would give me some direction. I thought about changing gas heater bars and how hot they are to the touch. I thought about jean zip flys and how they needlessly endanger the scrotum but I was unable to find a problem that I wanted to tackle. Then I thought about (as I have for my last project) earthquakes and the paranoia that has come along with them. As most people within the city are aware, there has been a series of large(ish) earthquakes along the cook strait fault. Whilst they seem to have tapered off there is always the risk of another one. I have discussed the issue with many people and there is a very rational paranoia about the next big one.
 We cant be sure if there will be one or if there is how big it will be but one thing most people are sure of is  that they don't feel safe living in cramped wellington spaces with many objects stacked high , just waiting for a shake of a large enough magnitude to cause them to tumble onto some unlucky victims head.  Wellington is a cramped city. There aren't enough desks or doorways for us all to crouch under. An earthquake triggered shield that covers a large enough area and protects people from debris is something that there is a need for in this crowded, earthquake ridden hellhole we call wellington.

Building upon this idea I thought about how much of an over reaction there has been to the last earthquakes, the biggest and most ironic overreaction being the mass evacuation of the city which caused rather large traffic problems. The largest ones we have had in wellington have been relatively minor. But the next big one might not be. No one can really say. But a device that measures earthquakes (seismograph) and advises on the correct response would help in knowing if we should just ride it out or scurry under our desks (or earthquake activated shield) woulod take away the paranoia that I and so many others feel everytime there is a gust of wind large enough to shake the house.
I decided to combine the two. The alarm device will most likely be a arduino controlled accelerometer and some other fancy dealys and the shield will be umbrella or reverse umbrella inspired so it can be tucked away safetly and then when there is a quake . . BAM instant debris shelter.

Here are my Photos and video Of my model . Im pretty pleased with how they have come out. Im pretty trilled with how the whole project has come out I feel my light is a pretty damn interesting take on lighting. The enviromnent for this light is in that of a darkened room of a gallery or museum , perhaps an earthquake museum I saw displayed in the foyer last week. Although the theme I was working with is autonomy, I feel there is a certain element of interaction with the model.The pendulum is very fun to swing back and forth, It has an excellent weight to it and couples with the flashing lights to make quite a fun model.

pendulum and putting it together

I then Fitted the lights to the frame. last main part to do was the pendulum. I had a steel ball lathed on the CNC lathe to act as the weight and I used the manual lathe to make a tip for the wight. I had a hole drilled into the centre to fit an 8 mm aluminium tube. I struggled for a while on how to fix the pendulum to the frame and ended up using a piece of bent wire that both ended the pipe well by tapering it off. Inside the pipe there is a copper wire that connects to the positive wire from the frame and brushes against the copper rings on the switch

ALMOST DONE

The last few things I needed to do was to add quarter circles to the bottom of the light housing and put the acrylic cover on top. I chose frosted acrylic to diffuse the light from the strip leds.

Finished

switch and lights

Next part to do was create a piece that works as part of the switch. The pendulum brushes against it and closes the circuit turning on the light.

Here it is after I had  rings burned into it with the laser cutter for accuracy then i dug them out with a chisel and bent and glued copper wire to create the "switches for each light. each set of lights has two rings.

I then taped the strip LEDs  to the hosing and soldered them all together with the switch.

I had quite a bit of difficulty with soldering at first but after a while I got used to it and my quality improved by the end. unfortunatly I ran out of black wire and had to use different colours.

project 1-b creation

OK blogging time. I haven't added anything since the plan presentation. Since then I have changed a few things to the design, originally I had planned on building a steel frame to house and support the lights and the pendulum but it had to be near perfect to work properly and not be off kilter. This is the frame I drew in solidworks. I wanted a minimalist frame that provided a lot of negative space. I wanted it to work with the light and pendulum and support the design without overpowering anything.

I decided the easiest way to make the frame was to use illustrator and have it laser cut. I used 4 layers of 6 mm MDF. I would have liked to use a better wood but, it was cheap, flat and I planned on painting it anyway..

Here is the disk I had laser cut to house the lights

here are the parts all cut out. Ive hollowed out a groove for the positive wire. I started painting, sanding and glueing it together.

I then Painted them and fixed them together and sanded them down

Frame all bolted and fixed together

project 1b

And here is the finished product. I am quite pleased with how it has come out but annoyingly the chemicals I had ordered where coming from overseas before being sent to me so I had to cancel the order because they werent going to arrive until tuesday the 13th at the earliest.

 

 

 

I love the last photo there, the colour and glow are very powerful in this image and are exactly how I wanted them to look. Unfortunatly the chemicals used in my presentation did not activate!!! very annoying. I had opened several glowsticks and seperated the chemicals on thursday morning before the presentation and kept them in seperate bottles but having waited outside thier origonal containers must have oxidesed them or somethingc to stop them from working. hopefully I can at least bring some more for the next class so it can be seen turning on