Everything seemed to work and I decided to remove all the unused wires to clear up the wire spaghetti. Here the weirdest thing happened. Connecting the green and black wire with a paperclip in the end of the molex connector worked perfect. But when I soldered the wires directly without using the molex connector it just wouldn’t start! So I reconnected the molex and tried again. Huh? Yes it worked?! Well if the PSU wants it this way I should kneel down and accept it (with frustration in my heart).

Another wise lesson that should always be taken into account is to connect all the ground wires of all devices used. Do not forget to connect the ground of the external device that is used to read the raw data of another arduino for example. Otherwise you end up with lots of bogus results.

Thanks for reading through my frustration which I promise you I won’t mention again in this post . Back to the fun part, building the casing. Due to the lack of results with the electronics I didn’t close/glue the casing. Last time I did it the PSU was fried and I had to cut open the glue lines again. This is in no way recommended for anyone. With the PSU up and running I took my chances, glued it down and the painting could begin.

Instead of a long probably not highly interesting story I just post the pictures.

So the challenge left is to program the lamp. The Xbee connection is still working. All the sensors are sending data which is received by the arduino inside the lamp. The LEDs are working with the TLC5940 LED driver. The servo is up and running. What is left is to combine the two and make it react to the indoor climate variables. This shouldn’t be too hard I guess.

The LED drivers are a different story. I tried them in a breadboard with the example code and it worked very well without any problems.

Connecting the prepared PCB to the PSU, arduino and LEDs made a big difference. The chip got 100+ degrees and didn’t do anything anymore afterwards. Obviously something was not right. Checking the wires made clear that the TIP48 were not insulated from the metal plate and made a short circuit. After insulating them I gave it another shot with the second LED driver. Didn’t get very warm now, looks good. Lady luck wasn’t on my side this time either. It overheated in just a minute and again chip 2 was dead. Rechecking the wires showed that the ground pin was not connected to anything. How stupid… I think we have to order new ones and make sure everything works fine on the breadboard before using this PCB. Otherwise just make a new one.

Till we meet again.

'KnightRider' test with 16 LEDs

It is quite basic with 3 transistors used as gates. The LEDs drain too much power (350mA@3V) to connect them directly to the arduino or LED driver. It should be possible to switch 1W of power which makes the tiny BC550 transistors which I normally use for switching LEDs are not sufficient. Now I use the TIP48 which are a massive overkill but at least they will survive.

Individually controlling 5 RGB LEDs takes up 15 PWM channels. The arduino just has 6 which means external electronics are needed to get more channels. Luckily somebody wrote a tutorial on the arduino forum how to do this with a TLC5940 chip. This chip has 16 PWM channels with 4096 levels each. This is more than sufficient for the lamp I would say. The downside of the chip is that it sinks the current into the chip. This means a channel is triggered by a low signal. In practice it turns the code upside down. Instead of turning a channel fully on by sending the high value (4095) it makes the channel low. Not a big problem, but it should be taken into account when programming.
Now we wait for the electronics to come in and see how it works out.

For the output a light is chosen that can be seen during the daylight and would give a nice fluent glow when lit. Here at the spire institute they had a 3W RGB LED that meets the requirements. The only downside is the heat it produces, together with the transistors to drive the 350 mA current.
The material for the diffusion of the light was also a coincidence. In the research center was a piece of rest material they used for a projector screen which breaks the light in a fluent way. The only challenge left was to find the right material for the base.

Another electronic challenge was the power supply. The LEDs need approximately 3V per channel at 350mA. This comes down to roughly 1A per LED. In this case 5 of these are used so a 5A power supply was necessary to only drive the LEDs. Not alone 3V was needed, but also 9~12V for the powering of the sensor boxes. The best way to go is an old power supply from a computer. It has all these power levels and can deliver enough amps per line, plus at a university are enough old computers lying around that can be scavenged.

The sensor boxes are made out of foamcore which gives them a neutral look from a shape and color point of view. People should not reflect on the object but should use the object to talk about the indoor climate. The lamp should follow this neutral language.

The first try was to use 3mm foamcore to create the base. This turned out to be a precise job and was taking too much time to cut it neatly. The other downside is the durability of the material. It dents easily which makes it not the ideal material for transportation.

Foamcore mockup

During the ITD course I worked with a lasercutter to cut the materials from flat material and glued the whole thing together as a big puzzle. The material was changed to something more durable but still easy to finish, MDF.
Denmark, or at least Sønderborg, was not the best place to find a lasercutter that could cut MDF. The decision was made to do this at a company in the Netherlands.

Overview of the components

With all the loose parts together the big fun of building could start.

Hackea a lamp oriented Arduino workshop from AlluvioneMediatica on Vimeo.

The provotypes should be integrated in the daily life of the users. Why is provocation over time that important? One moment of intervention could make all the difference. For example the pink blockage at Rotterdam central station works very well. It makes you think about who is working on it, who is doing the construction. On top of this was a guy in a #1 suit running over the station making people aware that some tracks are closed.

The reasoning about the time aspect should be improved and supported, because this is what makes it unique. There should be something about learning by doing over time, to reflect on its usage.

Possible room for Confusius?

What I hear I forget,

What I see I remember,

What I do I understand.

Philips has a prove/probe department that is working on future concepts. It is could be inspiring to see how they are working with provocative prototypes and their usage in big companies like Philips.

Comfort has a strong relation with culture. For example the amount of light that is being perceived as comfortable during dinner is different. An Italian restaurant in Italy is very light in contrary to an American Italian restaurant where the lighting is very weak.

Philip Ross did a research about how people organize their home environment for his home atmosphere controller. This could be interesting to look at because comfort is what people make and how they arrange their life inside of the home.

The focus of the project lies on the theory about how to get the best provocation. Don’t lose it out of sight. The IC project is just a carrier for this. Try to get feedback from the business partners on the outcome of the study, otherwise there is no use for the method. Try to ‘defend’ what the use is of a multi-interpretable object in the fuzzy frontend.

Froukje gave me a copy of Ianus Keller's promotion thesis, which also has a chapter about the usage of prototypes in the design process. Thanks again for that.

1. Comfort is what people make
2. Comfort is bringing feeling, observing and understanding in tune
3. Comfort is about social relations
4. Comfort is a political construct
5. Indoor comfort connects to the outdoor
6. Comfort means becoming healthy

1. Comfort is what people make

The indoor climate is mostly looked at as a property of the building. The observations show that the indoor climate is not only a property but also about how the inhabitants make use of the space. Their habits and activities should be leading in the designing for indoor comfort. Different activities require a different setup of the room. It would be interesting to look at how the arrangement of the indoor climate according to the current or planned activity contributes to the indoor comfort.

People find ways to structure life and structure discomfort, reduce complexity or chaos. They often accept unpleasant situations due to an experienced lack of control. Provide people a sense of control could empower them to take control and experience more comfort. Automatic controls sometimes ask for manual overrides due to personal preference or the feeling of power, being in control of the system.

1. Comfort is bringing feeling, observing and understanding in tune

The indoor climate consists of different intangible factors which most people are not even aware of. A mapping is made of a few intangibles like temperature, pressure and relative humidity. But how do people experience these factors? How do those factors contribute to indoor comfort? The scale and visualisation that is used now are quite abstract and not in line with people’s understandings and experiences. People rely more on a number than on their own feelings. They value an expert’s opinion which can range from the thermometer to the neighbours to the local plumber or even television.

1. Comfort is about social relations

People usually don’t live in solitude in a single room. They share a house with their family and their office with co-workers. This is where social relations come into play. One way of looking at it is how to come to a consensus about the indoor climate. Can the system be the arbitrator? Another way is to move towards private comfort bubbles where everybody has its own control over the indoor climate inside their bubble. It is about how people perceive the indoor climate. There is no common language to talk about the indoor climate which makes it hard to communicate what should be changed.

Another factor that plays a role in people’s comfort is the social hierarchy. The comfort differs because of the social composition of the people inside the room.  A formal meeting with potential investors is different from a weekly meeting with co-workers.

1. Comfort is a political construct

Regulations and standards are a great driver to set or adjust the standards. Whether people live up to these regulations is questionable. The challenge is to make people aware of the risks and why these regulations are being maintained. The government wants people to waste less energy by playing the ‘save money’ card. There should be more ways to engage people instead only looking at the financial side. Make people aware of the direct consequences and give them real-time information on which they can reflect could be useful.

1. Indoor comfort connects to the outdoor

Indoor and outdoor are mostly seen as states, black and white. The way these players influence each other is something much overlooked. A warm room during winter can be a cool place during summer. The ‘grey’ way of looking at it would be to use different stages over the day to prepare one situation with the qualities of the other. For example cooling a house during the night to prepare it for the warm upcoming day could make a big contribution to the indoor comfort.

1. Comfort means becoming healthy

The main focus is to prevent health risks rather than solving them. Make people aware of the relation between the indoor climate and their health would improve the comfort of living and together lowering the amount of sick building syndrome (SBS) cases. This can be seen from a short time view or a longer period where prolonged exposure and history play a role.

Bill Viola - Ocean without a shore.

This piece is about the contradictory meaning of the altar. They are in one hand a place to pray and worship the death and in the other hand the tomb of a dead person. This piece is setup in a very small chapel where 103" screens are mounted above the altars. It shows how thin the layer between life and death is by letting people in black and white (almost ghostlike) walk through a water curtain to get from the dead to the living (high resolution full colour image, very detailed). It should make people think about their own mortality. I also like the provocation of the technology that is implemented in the chapel's most sacred place, the altar.