Dale McCullough

        Bachelor of Creative Technologies       

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The final set up for our installation in studio. The lights are looking amazing and should look even better come lights out on the Open Studio night. 

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Video of some class members and even lecturers having a go at our installation. 

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A final set up test of our installation for open studio. Great to see it working and will be better to see people interact with it come open studio. 

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Final reflective statement for SIS

At the start of the semester we went through a large idea creation period. Most of our ideas were quite similar and the group decided we wanted something that involved water, electronics and hard materials that would be usable by multiple people in a dark and public space. A large proportion of the ideas were either not realistic or the resources and skills required were out of our budget and capabilities to complete. This process went on for some time and it got to the point where we needed to lock down on our design idea and get developing and researching into the materials needed. Although it took away some of our time to work on our project I feel our initial idea sessions and research really paid off further down the track allowing us to avoid larger problems where it would have been too far down the track to change. Now that it’s the end of the semester I feel we have stuck to the initial concept reasonably well with only changes in the actual way we developed the idea to fulfill those areas.

This installation project involved a lot prototyping, testing and researching. The initial research was mainly looking into other projects similar to ours and how our project related to others in the world but the majority of our research was into materials, guides and tutorials to work with our materials, water and construction. Prototyping was a key reason for our success throughout this project, we prototyped almost every part of our project and completed multiple tests with both the prototypes and the actual construction of the installation. Everything was tested and prototyped in some way. We tested the lights in water, lights with air bubbles, gluing acrylic, water proofing, drilling acrylic, floating/sinking rings, cutting wood, routing wood, drilling wood and even made a scaled version of the tank. Basically we used spare materials to test everything before we did it for the actual project. This method really helped us distinguish issues that could happen before it was too late to amend on the real project as well as allowed us to practice the use of different materials with the different tools we had.  

The biggest mistake we probably made was purchasing tantalised wood, as students we just walked into the store, knew the size of wood we wanted and looked for the cheapest wood we could find. It wasn't until we tried to start cutting and drilling the wood that we found out from the 3D labs that the wood was tantalised and therefore not allowed to work in the 3D labs with the wood. This caused a bit of a delay as we had to source the tools required ourselves and go to Simon’s house to cut the wood outside. The cutting was very hard to keep straight simply because we did not have the correct facility and tools available to us. This had a knock no affect and delayed us even further as we had to then manually chisel out the remainder of the wood to allow the tank to fit into place.

I’m proud of what we have created and it was well worth the amount of long hours and planning we put towards it. Some things were still left in a “Blue sky” frame of mind but really I couldn't be more happy or impressed with what myself and my team members Simon and Kimberly have achieved. 

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The full model set all together. The boxes follow the track guides and can spin around. 

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Importing my Solidwork assets into Unity, and Using an AR plugin to track a marker which at the moment shows a virtual red square. I wanted to get the markers to track each cube and move each cube but I’m not to sure that's a possible outcome at the moment, 

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Finally a week later I was able to get a booking space to laser cut and get the final 3 pieces I had missed out before, The full base is done and functional. The cubes are all made but I'm having troubles with my AR tracking system. At first I simply could not get my webcam to show live feed within unity with the plugin, I have since fixed that though after many forum posts and tutorials, Now I’m just having problems with my camera detecting markers and setting up new ones. 

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Its getting to the final stages now and its really looking good. A longer water test was conducted to check the bottom of the tank again, we found the outside of the value was ever so slightly dripping so as you can see in photo 1 we added a tonne of silicon just as a safety pro-caution, surely no water can get through that seal now. A last minute change of lighting plans has taken place as we will now be doing lights down both sides of the tank rather than just at the base. We chiseled out a section for the LED strips to fit into on the side C frames and made a space for the Arduino and cabling to fit in.  

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The video of us filly the tank up and playing it, with success goes at getting the ring onto the pole. 

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Time for a water test, best do that outside though. It’s been quite a few days now of chiseling, sanding and filing but it all fits together nice and snug now. The water test thankfully went pretty well, in fact it went better than I had hopped. We managed to full the water up 3/4 which is about the planned height, There was no leaks within the tank nor did the tank bulge thanks to our little structure poles. The only bad thing really was if the pump was pressed to hard it could create a wave big enough at the top to splash out a bit, but we fixed this now by adding two top corner pieces. The reason it went better than I had hoped was because we managed to play the game, as intended and actually got a good amount of success with getting the rings onto the poles. (Video to be posted)

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Got my Laser cutting for Studio done today. I had to do some on the fly changes as the laser cutter can only go up to 600mm and my wood was 800mm. In the Process I somehow managed to miss 4 of my pieces, so while putting it together I ran out and was unable to put it all together. It felt like those times you go to your grandparents, get a puzzle out and find out once your almost done that there are some puzzle pieces missing. The Laser cutting lab is fully booked now so I’m not sure what I should do about it. In the mean time Ill finish making all the boxes, incase I discover im missing some of those as well. 

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Success/disaster today; after distracting everyone in studio with loud banging noises for the better part of the morning, we managed to get the base completely cut out and fitting the tank quite nicely. The disaster part came when we took it out on the grass for it’s first water test - and despite my semi confidence, it completely failed. Luckily we have left enough time to re seal the side piece with glue now that we have identified the gaps, and hope that will do the trick. If all goes well with that, then we will almost be finished!

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Now catching up in time, Simon sums this one up pretty well. The water test, well just another thing that didn't go according to plan. This seems to be a reoccurring situation despite the planning and tests that go into it before hand. Least we discover the faults now rather than much further down the track as it gives us plenty of time to amend the issues and move forward. Its good to see it all coming together and finally starting to resemble a final completed project.   

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Well today didn’t quite go to plan, but most of the base got done in the end so it’s not all bad. Dale’s jigsaw seemed to keep wanting to cut on an angle which got worse over time. I cut what looked reasonably straight and on the line, then I turned the block over and it was nowhere near the line. So after making an absolute mess of it we had to clean it up with the chisel which actually worked a lot better than the saw. We will have to chisel the 3rd bit anyway as it only goes halfway through, so that’s tomorrows job. Also got some stain and varnish to test on an off cut, I think it will definitely be easier on the eye and draw more attention to the tank and what’s happening inside.

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Clint wanted to see our fails, well here is just one example of how things didn't quite go as planned. The Jig saw, well it didn't cut straight. This left us with some crazy but creative ways to cut it and then required quite a lot of touch up and correcting with chisels.

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After taping the other side on, we were able to get an idea of how much the volume of water will affect the sides of the tank. It started to bulge quite bad at about 1/3rd full, so we will have to place the pillars lower down as that’s where most of the pressure will go. Also, the base should cover 10-15cm of the bottom which will provide further support. The good part is that there were no leaks, even from the taped side! So far so good

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Its been a busy few weeks and I haven't had time to update my Tumblr recently. As I’ve got a spare moment now I thought I best catch up. As Simon says above we taped the edges up and tested the water, Since I’m a bit behind in updates we have actually since glued the final side on and tested it again. Sadly it leaked, quite badly actually. I found it interesting writing this now as it helped me reflect on what we did back then, and how well that tape actually worked. Clearly it still didn't help us quite prepare for the outcome either way though. 

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Laser Cutting file ready for my appointment. Hopefully my tolerances fit ok. Studio slowly but surely getting to that final point  

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Studio VI

Multimarker Tracking. Found this plugin which is usable with Unity that provides some good description on how barcode tracking can work and what is required. I feel that what I am trying to make is possible its just a matter of having enough time to set it up, laser cut and glue all together. 

http://artoolkit.org/documentation/doku.php?id=3_Marker_Training:marker_multi

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The project is getting to its final stage. The ring poles have been glued on, the C framing has been cut to size. We now need to have one final glue to finish off the tank then the final piece of the puzzle will be cutting out a section in the base to hold the whole structure up. Once its all finished I hope like crazy that our testing and steps in place to give it strength pay off. Because once we fill the tank of water its either going to work amazingly or destroy everything we have been working towards over the past few months. Its a make it or break it stage and I can’t bare to find out the result!