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FabAcademy 2014

Hugo Moissinac

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Application and Implication

A tangible construction kit to build furniture.

So my project will be about making a construction kit for furniture in a small scale. It will be recognize by computer so it could be send to digital fabrication.



I defined the different parts of that kit, trying to keep it simple. It contains 2 sizes of vertical parts, 2 sizes of horizontal ones, and 4 differents type of joints. It could be improved but for now it's dedicated to make table, desk or shelf.



The idea is to recognize each parts by using resistors. The value is recognize by arduino, sending to grasshopper via the firefly plugin then generate a 3D model in the rhino software.



Differents values of resistors will be hide in each differents parts.



Constantly checking the value of the voltage, the arduino will be able to recognize the value of each new resistors added by knowing the value of the previous ones.



So I can only recognize my parts in vertical lines.



But if you put 4 joins for an horizontal parts, it's because you want to put an horizontal parts. So an algorithm will recognize that an automatically add the horizontal parts in the model.



This way the construction of a furniture with the kit is no more than an electronic circuit with resistors. The image is schematic but I will use the principle of a voltage divider with a known resistors at the begin so I could properly mesure the resistor's value.



Material and cost


I made lots of experiment so I know resistors in series are much more appropriate for that despite the schematics is in parralels.
So i'll need to use (mostly from digikey):

-RCA closed-circuit single switch connectors
-Resistors
-Analog multiplexing chip (CD74HC4067)
-Fabkit
-Wood, plexiglas, 3d printable wires, ...

This is potentially a super cheap project because resitors cost nothing, so all the money will go to the connectors (arround 50euros) and to the wood and other materials to make a nice object.

Who's done what beforehand?


Apple use resitors in their charger to recognize wich device is plugged in but I couldn't find any projects using multiple resistors for recognize stuffs.
About the design parts, it's highly inspired by the new joinery system in furniture design.

Schedule and things to do


I've already did some check to be sure that what I am going to do is possible, so the experimental parts is done but I still need to build everything.
The schedule is :

-Building the base that will recognize everythings and will be connected to computer (eagle design and soldering work)
-Write a software that deal with the real world (wich means define the -probably many- possible problems and do a piece of code to resolve them.
-Digital fabrication of the construction kit with connectors and resistors inside.
-And the coolest work : find a good shape and do a scale 1 furniture

And if I had some extra times, i'd like to explore the differents possibilities of that kit in the form of some story boards. For example I have some ideas about sharing the designs, uses differents template for the joinery, parametrically scale the furniture so it fit your home, ...