Making Toys

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  Franci Castelli 11:33 pm on December 20, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Final Documentation – Overly Attached Monsters 

  “Overly Attached Monsters” is a pair of plush characters, tied to one another, in which I wanted to see embodied a heartbeat and a human-like reaction as empathy, affection and jealousy, to trigger some emotional reaction in the person interacting with them.

  The interaction with the toy starts with the user wearing the pulse sensor and getting a clear read of his/hers heartbeat. The two cute little monsters are there waiting for their person. If the person playing with them takes one by its hand, the monster will get excited feeling the loving heartbeat of  its person and will start shaking at the rhythm of his/her heartbeat. The second monster, being overly attached to his little friend will have  jealous reaction.

  For this project I decided to pair up the pulse sensor with the wireless modules and see how that could work with the creation of a character. At the beginning what i envisioned was something simpler and less interesting with only one character. Later the characters became two, and ironically the second would have a reaction to the first.

  The two reactions happen only when the first monster gets its hand held, as a force resistor triggers the communication between the transmitter and the receiver. Then the moster with his hand hold starts shaking thanks to a vibration motor and the second one will get jealous and light up when his friend is shaking.

  

   

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  Franci Castelli 7:39 pm on November 16, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Assignment 11/16 

  So here is the code and the video.. it doesnt work perfectly with the LED but couldnt figure out why.

  

   

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  Franci Castelli 3:12 pm on November 12, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Simon says 

  I forgot that I forgot to upload on friday after it got exported to youtube, apologies.

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  Franci Castelli 2:51 pm on October 12, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Simon Enclosures 

  I started looking around for possible enclosures and i found some boxes that might work well for the purpose.
  I liked in particular a box in heavy laminated cardbord with a magnetic top opening, which might lead to an interesting configuration of the buttons/lights, and is also structured enough to resist some engagement during the game.
  Also i found a nice plexi box. In this one i like the material, the transparency, that could show maybe the guts of the project but still having everything tidy and gaming proof. Also it might allow to have the lights inside the box and the buttons on the outside, or other solutions.

  

  

  But thinking about it, I would really like if possible to build my own enclosure, allowing more freedom in expressing the memory game concept od simon says.

  I thought for example it could be a soft toy, and i was imagining something like an octopus, for legs are the light pattern, and the other four the controls to replicate and play

  

  Another option that i’d like to investigate if possible to realize is to take simon and make it a bit more physical, having a button for each hand and for each foot and replicating the light pattern with them.

  

  Just a few thoughts, i think more ideas will keep flowing

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  Franci Castelli 2:05 pm on October 5, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Maker faire 

  Maker faire was fun!
  So after walking around, talking to people and everything, so was thinking which ones where my favorite projects. I think I will add an extra one to the three we have to post, because I spend some time at DT booth and i really liked Aisen project Play-a-grill!
  The others were:

  • the giant Pong created by Hack Manhattan

  it was Pong scaled in giant sized and controlled by brainwaves, I didn’t try to brain control it but loved the idea, and how they managed to build the giant board. Also i found fascinating how such a big thing was controlled by a small arduino.

  • Solar simphony by Chris Kazcmarek

  A poetic project that was aiming to let people see the presence of energy in the space, and hear the light
  There were little machine powered by the sun that produced sounds like a bird chirping or egg shells softly hitting each other

  

  • The dude going around in a hammock with wheels!! that was awesome!

  

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  Franci Castelli 8:30 pm on October 4, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  I’m Francesca, everybody calls me Franci. I am from MIlan, Italy.
  My background is in Industrial Design and Communication Design, during uni years I worked both as an industrial designer and visual designer, but after graduating I mainly worked as a freelance visual designer.
  I also was lucky enough to get a couple of working opportunities abroad in Australia and Netherlands.

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