Making a solid prototype takes time. I thought my prototype from last week was fairly solid, but now the switches won’t move at all.
When I began planning my work, I had in mind something that would look like a cutaway from the side of the sewing computer:
I thought I would try to make a skin out of polymer clay in order to accomplish the feel of the real device. If I was analyzing the ergonomics of the device I would definitely concern myself with the form (and perhaps materials).
I started off by transferring the button spacing from my breadboard onto a perfboard. To do this, I took my buttons off the breadboard and punched them through the paper label that was covering them.
Once the buttons were placed with the proper spacing, I soldered them onto the perf board and ran wires. To keep things neat, I soldered a 7-conductor ribbon cable to the top of the board. I debated about whether it was better for the cable to stick out of the top or the bottom, but ultimately decided on the top so the prototype could sit flat on its side.
Three hours later, after drilling, cutting, and wondering if I should have drawn things out first, I had a solid prototype. The way I’m used to working, at least when I work with wood, is to draw detailed plans before beginning. Although I had an idea in my mind (see above sketch) of how the prototype was going to come together, I didn’t know how all of the layers were necessarily going to get connected. When I discovered that I didn’t have enough standoffs and the right size screws to attach them, I had to keep improvising. It reminded me a lot of playing with Legos when I was younger. I always seemed to run out of the one length of axle I needed and had to piece things together another way. In short, I wonder if it takes more time to hack something like this together, or to draw out detailed plans and then construct it.
It is definitely my tendency to want to lay things out in Visio or sink some serious time into Sketchup (even though I don’t know it very well). Since I was working at home and didn’t have the precision of the drill press, I felt that I might as well just improvise and keep working rather than wasting the day drawing plans I wouldn’t need to use again. Yes, I would have had nice illustrations for my blog, but it wasn’t worth the two or three additional hours. It’s all about the constraints, right? Today’s constraint was time.
After assembling the unit, I covered the button with cardboard to prevent electrical shorts. I didn’t have long enough screws to go through the bottom of the IPAC2 and a sheet of acylic.
Lest I should give the impression that this week’s assignment came and went without the requisite burst of madness, I did try to create buttons for my prototype.
That’s right, I sculpted buttons… and they would have worked, but I ran out of steam when I realized I was going to need to drill another six holes in another sheet of acrylic. I may attempt this feat again before Tuesday. This is contingent upon first tweaking my code to recognize the new button assignments. The physical construction of the prototype encouraged a different wiring scheme from the one I used on the breadboard.
