I am having trouble deciding what my final project will be. I started with the idea of researching on deployable structures and its integration with sensors to controll its deployment. Comming from an architectural backgroung I can see its huge posibilities, not only on smart facades developement but also on adaptive solar and water captors and developement of emergency architectures.
I think it is a fascinating area but having looked deeper on past years projects I realised it might be better to focus on an specific product/project to get a more comprehensive understanding of digital fabrication processes. Thinking on more specific subjects, I have come to a couple ideas I might be interested on.
The first one is a computer controlled brewing sistem. There is infinite info about homemade STEM and RIMS brewing systems on the internet. There are also more ambitious projects that also aim for a beatiful design and aesthetics such as brewbot, picobrew or brewy.
On the other hand, as an amateur bike rider lately I keep hearing the word power-meter and watts more and more often. Everyone wants to train on watts now. Years ago, speed, cadence, and pulse where the mainly used data for training. For a while, profesionals have been training with power-meters (watts), which is the force you generate and transfer to the pedal. It is a great value to measure, because it is not affected by wind nor slope. Speed, for example, is hugely affected by external conditions, so is not a value you can rely on to check out your training performance. Lately the amateur cyclists have started to train on watts info too. The problem is that the commertial devices you need to measure power are really expensive (from700-1500 Euros) They ususally work with strain gages and its production cost should not be that expensive. I have done a brief research on the different models and there are a couple interesting aproaches.
So righ now I haven't quite decided what my final project will be. I hope that further discussion with my tutors will help me decide which direction I should end up following.
Having talk with my tutors Santi and Xavi, I have finally decided myself. I will be working on the Bike Power Meter, as it is something that fully motivates me and that I can use to my own training (if at the end of the course I manage it to work).
Here at Fablab BCN we are doing reviews on our final projects proposals. This has been great, as we are getting an overview on everybodys final project and also to get a feedback for our classmates and tutors. For mine I prepared a very simple slides presentation on my bike power meter.