Marcus Banks @banksdesignandtechnology - Tumblr Blog

Science Writing and Absurdist humor as Commentary on Fake Science

My project involves the development and publication of ‘fake science’ articles written with sarcasm and absurdist humor

The IoT portion uses Apache as a Web Server and hosts my webpages on a .net domain.

I’m hoping to contribute to the dialogue surrounding fake science and science education. I want to publish scientific articles which sound scientifically accurate, but are completely wrong and then user test to see how much the general public can tell the writing is fake.

I’d like to comment on the future of biotech and biodesign by taking their concepts and making fun of them.

When I use terminal to see if Apache is running, it is. But my attempts to load my localhost page doesn’t work.

This is iteration 3.0 of this project.

Iteration 2.0 was trying to connect DoT to IoT and I wasn’t able to clearly articulate the concepts.

I would like to continue exploring ways in which I can take connect IoT to non-iot BioTech concepts.

I am attaching my 3rd ppt related to this iteration. I will get this to work once I can afford my own computer.

LINK TO PRESENTATION

-M

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vm--HUOMd6TipFKTzd1IROodBf-qcxEIBZi59Dm8rtU/edit#slide=id.g86f07cedbe_1_16

I work from open source and biodesign principles, so I wanted to take a widely used-somewhat technical item, a microscope, and recreate it using a Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Thermal Printer, and USB Camera. The idea being that a field researcher would be able to carry around a very portable imaging product, that also printed images in real-time so any lost data would be somewhat preserved. The idea was inspired by a trip I was booked to take last semester. There is a field biology conference called “Dinacon” where you go into the rain forest in Central America and try to create something or collect some data for your own personal use as a researcher. So, I started to think about the tools needed for small species identification and how this could be aided by open-source materials.

The first thing I needed to do was to get my input working (microscopic images). Initially, this was simple, I was able to download the proper drivers for Rasperry Pi and my USB scope captured images as intended. As I progressed through the project and running into issues, I decided it would be better to use Ubuntu and their webcam drivers.

The next part of the project was to get an output working which I had done before. This was a two-part process: Conversion of images to Bitmap and then printing the images with a thermal printer. The bitmap portion was very simple. It was a short processing sketch that converted the image and was supposed to send it to the printer. This is where I ran into some issues again. All of my bacterial prints did not look like the BitMaps. They barely came out clear. So I need to re-asses this output.

I used coding that I had done before, so I’m still having issues troubleshooting this problem.

So Far: Raspberry Pi is working USB microscope works great with Rasberry Pi Conversion to Bitmap is working Printer is working Image is not printing properly

I decided to switch my focus and move onto creating materials needed to encase the Pi and hold the microscope. I searched open-source materials and slightly altered the STL files to make sure they fit with my microscope/PI. The microscope holder worked out well. But the Pi/Arduino encasing had some issues.

The print for the encasing *yellow* was bumped or hit during printing and it threw the printer off. I’m working on refining the design to get it to print faster and with less support.

Overall, I’m hoping to turn this into my main project for this class. I’d like to find a way to include databases into this project and potentially have a scientific factoid printer. I’m thinking I want to potentially pull back on the microscope part and make that a project on its own.