Concept Construction Report

This was meant to be posted earlier, sorry for the delay in time.

We have now started working on the Facecube. We have formed three sections in our group. Those sections are web programming (Johannes), SunSpot programming and electronics (Alex and Tomasz) and finally the most important part of our “company” the concept construction section (Me and Robert).

Since the software department already has reported about how their work is going I will tell you a little bit about the development of the physical concept.

The idea is that we’re going to have ha plastic outer shell with buttons, that you can take on and off for charging of the battery and wiring with cables. On the inside there will be like a wooden skeleton with the SunSpot in the middle. For the plastic shell we bought two cubic photo frames (since we want to demonstrate the friends making function we will need two Facecubes), and out of this we thought that we could just cut out the buttons using carpet knifes. This was impossible; we had to use an electric saw instead. Since the outer shell is the only thing you are going to see we want to make it beautiful. That is also one very important aspect of the Facecube; people wouldn’t want to carry around a cube if it isn’t elegant.

For the wooden skeleton we use small sticks that we glue together. The basic part of the wooden skeleton is a cubical frame. From this cubical frame we then glue sticks that will place the SunSpot in the middle of the cube. We have also bought parts for building a spring system for the buttons. To get an input from the button we are going to use two surfaces covered with aluminum foil and when these two surfaces touch an electric circuit will be created which will give us an input in the SunSpot.

The difficulties that we are facing are that the spaces we have to work with are so small. The distance from the plastic shell to the Sunspot is only one to three centimeters, and in that space we will not only have to fit the button construction but the LED system too that will light the sides with different colors (hopefully, we start with only one color but ultimately we want several). The LEDs will have to be placed closest to the plastic shell to avoid shadows from other objects; therefore we will make the buttons deep. Meaning that the outer part of the button (the part you press) will have wooden sticks placed on each corner and these sticks will then be connected to the top surface of the electric part of the button. These wooden sticks will create a space between the outer shell and the inner core where we can place the LEDs and avoid shadowing from the cables and so on. A problem with that might be making the LEDs light spread enough to light the whole side of the cube.