Final_SENSOR INPUT

This one is actually driven by the light sensor input.

Final_MANUAL INPUT

This video is the actual final product. The section of the aperture panel that is driven manually.

Developing the Prototype

At this stage I already finished the Processing software and began to manufacture the assembly parts. There was one complex part that had to be cut on CNC – the part of the frame that holds the servos which steps up in order for the blades not to clash. The good part is that the GH definition was set up in the way that everything was parametric so really no drawing or modeling was involved – just the GH code.

Single "Blade" and Servo

This is a video of a quick test. The aperture system is driven by servo motors and the "blades" of glare - reducing material are attached to the pivots / shafts of the servos. There is also software that I wrote in Processing which communicates with Arduino via Serial port and Processing Arduino-dedicated library. There are options to swich from sensor input to slider/manual input (so you can drive the aperture manually as well). For the time being the sensor input is replaced with a potentiometer (for testing purposes).

FireFly, Sensors etc...

I am skipping a bit here, but the bottom line is that I’ve been working with several types of sensors and writing Arduino code for them. I did a few exercises before hooking Arduino and sensor input to Grasshopper using the FireFly library by Andrew Payne in order to drive the geometry in there. Basically, for my thesis I was developing a curtainwall system that is driven by sun tracking device and light sensors and for the presentation in the virtual (GH) environment I used FireFly to drive the aperture motions within GH. Further on I was going to manufacture (partially) one of the panels of this curtain wall. The images here are an aggregation of the stuff that I collected over this period.