How the Borg play funk
the beatjazz system continues to iterate itself to life. these are the hand units for the system. as with the headset, they continue to iterate themselves into more refined states, owing to having a means of easily creating updated parts. I had planned to have an associated video with this post but i decided to wait until after the weekend when the very first controller contributor comes to berlin to take reciept of his controller. i figure that will be a much better video than me sitting in front of my webcam.
the reason for the differences in color between the two units in the pictures is (a) i ran out of black PLA filament (biodegradeable plastic derived from plants-Polylactic acid) and the silver one is for the contributor, while the black/silver one is for frankensteining various parts. i ordered the silver PLA from a filament supplier in the UK called Faberdashery. one word; GORGEOUS! on the spool it was already beautiful but once i started extruding it into parts i was in shock at how gorgeous it is. they really know what they are doing. very high quality with little flecks of reflection and it extrudes very smoothly and evenly without breaking off as was the case with some other PLA i have used in the short time i have been printing with this material.
I have had a chance to play with them over the last few days. the action is very much solid and sure. i have not added padding for the keys and may keep it that way. it very much feels like a musical prosthesis now. the palm bracing system i designed seems to work well but i wont really know until i have sweated with it in a club. in comparison with the cardboard prototypes, this feels more like it is part of my hand and there is more of a feeling of confidence that i can do more expressive gestures as if feels more robust and is about 30% smaller, though slightly heavier.
the old design served it purpose though, as many of the immediate design cues were gleaned directly from the prototype, namely the fsr positioning and susequent "rim" around each key to funnel the fingwer into its proper place, the joystick angles and the palm bracing mechanism. also, the lights now not only provide indication of the element color, but illuminate the exposed internal circuitry. i had created a version that was enclosed (which is where 50% of the black PLA ended up) and it looked like some sort of black gourd. it did not look nearly as cool as i thought it was going to, so i regrouped and went back to my exposed circuit design, and i am over the moon with how it came out.
last week i looked at how i wired the internals of the prototype and i realized that it was wildly inefficient. i was able to compress all of the circuitry onto a small prototyping board that attaches directly to the arduino fio that acts as the sensor interface.
i find that it tells its own story not least of which it say "i am a functional interface" which will go some way towards convincing people that it is not some sort of trick to convince them that the person playing it is just dancing with lights on their hands.
one by one, i will be getting these controllers out to their contributors in the coming weeks with the first being this weekend. with him here at my flat (workshop?!) I will be able to refine certain aspects that i designed to be multi-size and see if they translate. should be a lot of fun any way it goes.
back on monday with video. l8r.
