Making Toys

Thesis Draft

Designed with freestyle skaters in mind, Skate Signal is partly a safety device, and partly a stylistic add on, and partly a training device. Skate Signal will be mounted with an ardiuno board,an accelerometer, and an array of LED lights that will illuminate on as the board flips and tilts. Like turn signals on a car the led lights mounted underneath the board can also be used to signal the direction the skate board is steering. On the top side, the nose of the board will be fitted with an array of lights that will illuminate at individual orientations when the board is tiled upward, as during certain tricks such as manuals or nose manuals. This is will aid the rider in finding his or her balance point while skating.

Responses

  1. Joe Volpe Avatar
    Joe Volpe

    list 5 questions you would ask the perfect guest critic, What do you want feedback specifically?

    I want feedback specifically on implementation and the perfect critic would be someone like Tony Hawk.

    questions:

    • How could the design be more seamlessly worked into freestyle skate culture?
    • How could the electronics be placed within the design as to not inhibit the skater?
    • How easy would this be to mass produce?
    • What is more important the visual aesthetic or the practical functionality?
    • How should I market this? Is it worth marketing?
    • Are you hiring?
    Reply
  2. Joe Volpe Avatar
    Joe Volpe

    Second Summary:

    1) Re-Write your one sentence description.

    “Skate Signal” is designed with freestyle skaters in mind as a training application and stylistic addition to their boards that responds to the boards movements.

    2)list 2 “big findings” that came out from the evolution of your protoypes.

    • learning to work with and program accelerometers.
    • upon researching this, I have devised a system I will further develop to track skate board flip tricks electronically with minimalist hardware attached to the board.

    3) list 3 differences with your work from that of prior art.

    The prior art I have discovered as done two things. It has either mounted lights on the board and ignored what the free style skateboard is used for, or the creators focused on the tricks of skaters but have mapped them and placed the electronics in hopelessly poor places on the physical board while using an abundance of cumbersome electronics.

    My work hides the electronics of the board keeping it useful to the freestyle skater while adding aesthetics and sporting applications. At this time, I have also kept my electronics to a minium, relying on one microcontroller, one accelerometer sensor, 9 leds, and one coin cell battery.

    Reply

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