Technology & Realization

I’ve gained a lot of making and technology skills during the courses Cardboard modeling creative electronics and intelligent interactive products. I used these skills during my final bachelor project when I made and programmed the sports buddy.

As I described in my personal development plan I wanted to be hands on with this project, to improve my making skills. This included technology. I started with ‘making’ for my midterm prototype. I had chosen to use Arduino, with a mini motor disc and haptic motor controller to imitate the heartbeat of the buddy. These also needed to be soldered. Furthermore, I made a simple fabric shape to go around it. I also used clay for my shape explorations, which I had never really done before. I’m usually quite 2D oriented in my design process (e.g. sketching), so I tried to broaden my horizon. I did learn that it can be quite useful to make something out of clay, in order to be able to feel the shapes better. This also helped when I tried to communicate the idea to the visitors at the midterm demo day.

For the final demo day I made a prototype using an embedded prototyping tool, the Hexiwear, which was programmed in C++. In order to do this I followed an online course at the TU Delft to refresh my programming skills. Going back to the basics really helped me see more logic in the programming.

The Dialogflow part of the sports buddy was programmed in Python, this was a new language for me. However, I found the python language easier to understand than C++. In the programming phase of my project I asked for help to someone that is an expert in programming and embedded systems, because the project I was trying to implement was more advanced than my programming skills. From him, I also learned how to make programming protocols, and why it is so important to use those.

Even though I still need help when it comes to programming, I think I now better understand what is possible. And even if I don’t write big codes in the future, I can now explain what I want and why, to someone who can. Which will help me in the future when working in a multi-disciplinary team.

The final buddy prototype was made of two kinds of fabric, I chose these fabrics because of the look and feel that I wanted for my sports buddy. In addition to this I designed the pattern for the sports buddy myself, by making a clay shape exploration. I sewed the sports buddy by hand because it was such a small prototype.