as of today I have the lights all wired and coded for the right intervals but I have yet to assemble the wires into the shape of each frame. Initially I was going to glue them down on wood but I realized there was too much overlap between frames and it would cause the lines…

This week I worked on the hot air balloons and attaching them to the box. So far, everything is working pretty well! Earlier in the week I went to Michaels and found some round ornaments in different sizes that I bought to use to make varying sized balloons to give more of a 3D illusion….

After many hours of crinkling tin foil and burning my fingers on hot glue, I’ve completed the metal reflective foil tree which will support the EL wire “leaves”. Unfortunately I ran out of hot glue sticks after construction of the tree and was unable to find the correct size at the local price chopper. I…

Last week I finished multiple main tasks for my final project so I could focus on more extraneous goals for this week. The first objective on my list was getting the software to work as desired. Second, I wanted to put together part of the housing so I could start organizing my project. I mentioned…

This week my goal was to at least get all of the glass pieces cut out for the project. I succeeded in cutting out all of the pieces, and I grinded a full panel and half of the rest of the three panels. Since I had a full panel grinded I soldered it together to…

So, I had a very successful week in terms of project progress. I was able to finalize a design for my larger box, and assemble that almost entirely. I was also able to secure the light source that would be used to back light the box, since the light source will be separate from the…

This past week I spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted my final design to look like. With the help of some friends, I was able to start the design and implementation of a 6.5 foot diameter light mural. So far, I have strung 200 of the 600 lights onto the wall….

Since I changed my idea from my initial plan I am a little behind, however I have made some success and countered some potential problems. After looking over a lot of LED Matrices and LCD Screens I chose one of each and ordered them along with a Raspberry Pi Zero. I am still waiting for…

Unfortunately, my biggest challenge this week has been waiting. The electronic parts I ordered for the project still haven’t arrived. They should be here by Wednesday at the latest but that means I haven’t been able to work on the technicalities of the project. Once the parts arrive, I anticipate the hardest part will be…

This week I worked on setting up my EL wires and getting the control board soldered and coded. I thought it was going to be more time consuming but after the initial soldering the rest was fairly plug and play this gave me time to get started on my design. although I am still unsure…

The hardest part of my project so far has been the scaling up of the small aluminum foil tree from last week to a larger tree that will allow for softer bends on the EL Wire, and space for multiple colors to be run alongside. After reading the comments on my previous post, I decided…

For this past week, my goal was to tackle the hardest challenge I knew I was going to encounter with this project, which is CADing the frame for my infinity icosahedron. When it comes to robotics, I’ve always been primarily focused on the coding aspect however I have dabbled in Solidworks / other CAD softwares…