Vox Memoria Documentation

When we last left off, the MPU-9250 sensor was soldered, and so I had no more excuses to put off coding sigh. Screenshot from tutorial (Mitov, 2016) The first tutorial I tried was this one , pictured above. The writer suggested this software called Visuino, and after following it, this is what I ended up with I have to say this tutorial was really helpful and easy to follow, but the results weren't really what I could use. I basically just needed the readings to be numbers that were sent to the Serial port so I could read the information in Unity. Video showing output from Visuino. (Arduino Learning, n.d.) The next tutorial I tried was this , which still didn't give me the results I needed. How to use MPU-9250 Gyroscope, Accelerometer, Magnetometer for Arduino (Robojax, 2018) Finally, I found this YouTube tutorial which included this library , which after installation I managed to get the serial read to give me numbers I could use. SO...

Aaaaaaaa essay reading and research stuff. No FYP progress today, but the silicone has arrived and I thought why not write one more blog post. Hi welcome to my unboxing  Appreciate the padding, though legit 2/3 of the box is air I can't make it now I'm too stressed Instructionss Honestly a little excited to get mixing, but also terrified of screwing up and having to buy more. I'm trying not to think too much about how much every little ml of this costs. Okay back to reading about museums and how Instagram is a horrible horrible place bye.

Went to the electronics lab today. Chloe handed me some solder wire, and an empty pcb board to practice on.  Setting up. Using Heart box to carry stuff around haha Setting things up to be soldered Done! Testing the connections to make sure nothing is shorting out  Initially connected everything on the breadboard, but decided to change to wires so I could move the accelerometer around more freely It can now be moved around!  Will update more when I get to sorting out the coding for this. Honestly super stressed about my dissertation lately and not in the mood to code sigh. I also managed to pick up a 47KΩ resistor from the lab, since Chloe said it was okay and they had whole racks of resistors. Bonus pic of what the inside of a breadboard looks like

The flex sensor and MPU board had arrived by Monday, but when I went to the Electronics lab on Monday, a woman (lab tech?) named Chloe said that there were classes scheduled, and I could only go back on Wednesday to solder the pins onto the MPU board. Could only play with the flex sensor in the meantime.  All the pins!  Bendy bendy The main reference I'm using for the flex sensor stuff is this tutorial from Sparkfun.  The set up looks fairly straightforward, but I realised I didn't have the 47KΩ resistor listed. Since I noticed that the level 4 students seemed to be done with their arduino experimentations, I tried to zip down to the loan store before my tutorial earlier today hoping I could find one.  Spent most of the tutorial time staring at resistor bands and learning about what each stripe colour means. Didn't manage to find the right resistor at the end, but since the tutorial says "Many values from 10KΩ to 100KΩ will work.", David sugg...

This was where we last left off! The mould is still chilling in that heated cabinet thing (which means I didn't need to drag it all the way back to my flats yay).  After cleaning up the mould, I brought it to 3D Lab 2 and asked Kath for her advice on what Silicone to purchase. She suggested that I get this type of silicone, known as Dragon Skin.  At her advice, I ordered the fastest setting type, which I was to brush on layer by layer. I placed the order on the Friday that I de-moulded the mould from the Bentley website, paying a very costly £43.72 for a "Trial unit", including shipping costs (Current project cost = £103.02). I also needed to get oil paints, mixing cups, and non-latex gloves (latex interferes with curing).  This purchase from the art store added up to about £24.20. Current project cost = £127.22 (very painful, I know).  While we're reeling from the pain of those purchases, here's some research into the different ty...

Just smashing out blog posts today hahaha might as well keep it up while I have the momentum going. Final post of the day is images from de-moulding I did this afternoon! Can you feel the antici- -pation Right after pulling the big plaster mould from the board! The plaster still felt a little damp at this stage, and I felt like I could scratch the plaster and ruin the mould if I wasn't very careful.  Add caption The digging begins At this point I wasn't sure which side was up haha. but a bit of the mould is exposed! Managed to pull out a big chunk at once.. Tada! The clay came out in a few big chunks but I squished them back together.  Don't worry the plaster flakes are from the sides.  Close up. It still had some clay in the grooves, but it looks really good! Close-up of the clay that came out With Karen's permission, I left the plaster mould in the big metal airing (heating?) cabinet in 3D Lab 1 so that it could dry ...

Through the weekend, I decided I needed to get back to fiddling with the Arduino bits again. Dug everything up and tried to get things sorted out back to what I made in the proposal stage. In the previous tutorial, David suggested that I try using balloons to simulate the heart and attach electronics to it to see what happens.  This weekend fiddling was rather rudimentary stuff, and I just wanted to get back into the groove of handling electronic bits. At this point I was still waiting for my parts (flex sensor and MPU gyroscope) to arrive from Amazon, so I didn't do much else beside set up some basic input/output stuff. 

A short ish update - the foam model heart I got from Amazon has arrived! It's really pretty good, though I didn't expect the joining parts to be curved rather than flat. It's also quite pricey at £15. I was hoping that I might be able to use this heart as a back up in case my silicone one falls through. If the joining parts were flat I might have tried to stick it on a board and try to make a mould with it as well, but since it isn't I'm not sure how to make the mould. Either way, glad to have something that's actually very accurate just in case.  The size is much more accurate than the heart I made Back view The seaaam. From the side I think it's slightly flatter than it should be What it looks like opened up. Due to a fire alarm at the Art and Design building, I also managed to talk to Ian, who reassured me that even if I can't make the heart controller part from scratch, the change to a pre-made one is still well within my proposa...

A NEW DAY This occurred last Friday (20th) btw. I'm trying to blog as much as possible but it's such a strain to log everything on the day itself. I spent more money at the uni art store for the two bags of plaster, and the safety mask (breathing in dry plaster is very bad for the lungs!), though I already included this in the previous tally, so current cost of project is still at about £59.30. Brought all the materials to another room in 3D lab 1 with the extractor table thing so the plaster wouldn't get all over the place. Ready to go! Built a sort of wall using the plaster sheet and tried to seal it with clay as well as possible.  Time to mix up the plaster! Karen offered to help so that I could document it, and I could try it for myself when I made another mould with the premade heart I ordered.  Sprinkle it with hands so its loose and not a whole chunk Keep adding plaster until you see "islands" like this Then g...