Materials and Data Testing 1

I started to try and test out some stuff to start to get an idea of what we could achieve with this project and to get some hands on experience with some of the technologies and materials that we could potentially use. This would give us a better idea of what we are working with and what we would need to achieve the end goal of a kick ass project.

Arduino Test:

To start off i wanted to mess around with an Arduino to see what we could do with that in terms of gathering data and representing it. The idea i had for a basic data representation test was to try and use twitter hashtags as the data and have some kind of LED or censer react through the Arduino whenever a certain hashtag is used. The reason for this was that twitter hashtags is a basic from of live data that can be easily monitored and i wanted to see if i could get the Arduino reacting to live data. 

This test quickly fell apart after some research into how to get the Arduino to be able to read live data from the web. A wifi shield is necessary for the Arduino to be able to do this and i was not able to get one for the bases of this test. I was not able to run this test but i am looking more into getting Arduinos to read live web based data and it is something i will come back to.

Wifi Shield

After not being able to get an Arduino to read live web data, yet, i instead start to mess around with it, getting it to read live physical data, such as movement, and use that to trigger some sort of feedback.

What i did was created a basic system using a ultrasonic range detector, some LEDs and a buzzer, all connected to an Arduino and wrote a script that would read the distance that an object was away from the censor and the closer it came to the censor the LEDs would light up in a row and the buzzer would make a sound. The closer the object came the more LEDs would light up and the frequency of the noise would become higher.  

Arduino Setup

This basic test could be representative of something larger that we may plan to do in the future. being able to take live physical data like that, we could take things such as the movement of people on a street or the growth of a tree and represent that in something else like an art piece.

Video Demonstration

Materials Test: 

Non Newtonian Fluid

"A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid with properties that differ in any way from those ofNewtonian fluids. Most commonly, the viscosity (the measure of a fluid's ability to resist gradual deformation by shear or tensile stresses) of non-Newtonian fluids is dependent on shear rate or shear rate history."

To start testing out some materials that could be used for a data representation project i started to look into materials that can react and change depending on different things, the logic being that when the data changes so do the materials. with this in mind i remembered seeing a video online about non Newtonian Fluid and how it reacts when it is moved and vibrated, so i decided to have a go off it and see whats what.

I thought this would be a good place to start as it is easy to make very accsessable to anyone with acsess to a grocry store. To make it all that is needed is corn flour and water, and some food die if you are felling adventurius. Mixing alot of cornflour, a small bit of water and a few drops of food die and i had it made.

Ingredients

Once it was made and i had to consistency right, so that is was liquid while it was stationary and solidified when it was moving, i was able to test what would have when it was subjected to vibrations. 

Placing some cling film around a speaker i had at home i then found an online tone generator that would let me pick the frequency of noise that would play from the speaker, the lower it was the more the speaker would rattle and the more the fluid would be moved around. I poured the liquid onto the speaker and ran different frequencies through it to see what would happen.

Result:

I cant even describe how disappointing the result was. The fluid reacted somewhat to the vibration but not enough really to create anything from. I was expecting some made shapes to form up in front of me like you see in videos online but nothing really happend. Weather i did something not wrong when making it, i don't know but i can at least say that we can move on from that as i don't think it will work as a material for our project.