312 Assignment Two. Summary. 600WORDS

The final product of our group assignment, “Gears”, is a steam punk aesthetically designed physical and virtual interactive system.
It consists of a wooden box with a button on the side and a metal cage on the top that contains mechanised cogs. The cogs are controlled by a crank handle on the side of the cage. As the crank handle is turned, the cogs trip an infrared sensor connected to an Ardunio circuit board. The Ardunio interacts with a flash file on the connected computer.
The visual aspect of the flash file is made up of two parts; the inside of the steam punk transportation and the viewing window.
The inside of the virtual steam punk transportation is largely made up of cogs and gears which turn with the physical cogs when the crank handle is turned, there is also an abstracted steam engine on the left which converts water into steam and powers the virtual cogs.
The virtual viewing window shows a 3D rendered environment that that the transportation system is traveling up through. The transport travels upwards when the crank handle is turned, but this drains the water and pressurizes steam in the engine, this is graphically represented by two bars below the view screen. If the steam and water levels go into red, the engine goes into critical. This causes the engine to start to break apart stopping the user from travelling upward and making the transport starts to descend. This is accompanied by small explosions, steam release and other various malfunctions. To remedy this, the button on the side of the physical model must be pressed to open the steam valve and replenish the water. If the button is pressed the crank will start working again and the user can travel upwards once more.
The parts I mainly worked on were initial research and concept development, the abstracted steam engine, the physical model, the sounds and the presentation. In the abstracted steam engine we originally planned to have the water and steam molecules personified to fit our original proposal “empathic creatures” but we took this out because the aesthetic clashed with the steam punk base of our system and the 3D environment.
Of the physical model I produced and designed everything apart from the cog pieces (which were laser cut by john), part of the lid of the wooden box, the cog mechanics on the outside of the metal cage and the metal cage itself which we got from Plastic Box.
I made the wooden box and lid from pine ply, made the metal joiners for the box, cut the Perspex and rod to size to fit into the metal cage and designed and implemented the cog mechanics and infrared sensor interactivity on the inside of the cage. I stained the wood but I didn’t paint the cogs or metal cage.
I produced the sounds for the system flash system which are activated by the physical system. There is ambient mechanical noise for the background, an engine breakdown noise, noises attached to the engine valves and steam release, and a noise for when the crank handle is being turned, this aurally displays that the cogs are in motion. I also produced the video for the presentation with Shaun.