This is the 3Dconnexion Space Mouse, there are a few different versions of this product. In its most basic form this is joystick that lets the user change the view of CAD and 3D modeling programs. Unlike many joysticks on the market the knob pivots on a ball joint at the top of the upright instead of at the bottom. This gives the interaction a more granular feeling. The movements have be very precise and as the the user zooms into the model the action of moving the knob becomes more sensitive. It is very much a direct connection the the modeling space making it easier to navigate around the model. It has a return-to-center design and has a fair amount of resistance to the movements. There are two quick access programable buttons locates on the silver ring under where the pinky and thumb rests. The design is ambidextrous by nature of the location of the buttons and the symmetry of the device.
The .gif attempts to show the physical connection to the digital environment. The knob at the top dose note rotate 360 degrees instead it has about 3 degrees of rotation, it also pivots 360 degrees, can move perpendicular to the base about 5mm of travel, and slide parallel to the base about 5mm as well. This seems like very limited amount of movement however, the longer the user holds the knob in a given direction the further the view of the model moves or rotates.
The controls are best described by the advance settings box of the 3Dconnexion software. The illustrations show the different movements that the knob moves. The combination of software and the physical device make this an interesting and very useable device. There are other devices like this on the market aimed at making an all digital experience something that is physically and tangible..
I’m not really sure what I have done here. Cute? Horror? Bazar? I really don’t know. My wife walked by as I was making this image and her response was “Ewww!! What the hell is that?!?!” To which I responded “Isn’t it cute?”, she walked away. The oversized respirator adds to the horror aspect of the image, the large eyes that have a very fuzzy or milky quality to them, the pupil formed only partially all at to the uneasy feeling I get when I look at it. Big eyes are cute right? Like many of Mark Ryden’s paintings….wait, are those cute , or just creepy??
This image may haunt me and when I send it to my brother, the photo of is his son, he most certainly will never forgive me. But on some level isn’t that the point? To create work that challenges the viewer in some way, to make the viewer walk away and think about it and at some point in the future return to the mental image.
Is it worse to view the image as an on looker or be the image’s creator? After all you know what went into making it, but it does ask questions about how and why your creative process led you to the outcome. I will probably put this image deep within my archives so I don’t accidently come upon it.
A quality control check of the parts reveled issues with the two aluminum parts. More details on that later in this post.
3D printed plumb base, printed solid for durability and weight.
3D printed plumb top, printed solid for durability and weight.
3D printed combination pcb mount and battery holder.
Extension arm, CNC milled 6061-al, at first glance part looked to bein spec.
Pillow Arm arm, CNC milled 6061-al, at first glance part looked to bein spec.
During the tapping process it seemed the the hole was not perpendicular to the arm face.
After tapping and assembly the mis-machining was confirmed.
Red lines show misalignment.
Red lines show misalignment.
Red lines show misalignment.
The misalignment between the arms causes the tension of the bearings to be very off creating binding for half of the rotation and looseness on the other half of the rotation.
I will be contacting the machining service for replacement. In the event that the parts can’t be replaced this design allows for the use of the only the extension arm however, the desired compound rotation will be lost.
Keyswitches are at the heart of one of the most used human input devices, the keyboard. They are produced in a number of different form factors and styles. When the keycap is depressed the keyswitch presses into a pcb located below it, which in turn completes a circuit sending an electrical impulse to the device resulting in the predetermined action. These keyswitches preform the same type of action that a momentary, non-latching, switch preforms. The basic action is a temporary state change.
Data sheets
Link to folder containing all the datasheets for the given keyswitches
Basic information of from the datasheet
Switching Voltage 12V AC/DC max – 2V AC/DC min
Switching Current 10mA AC/DC max – 10µA min
Insulation Resistance 100MΩ/DC 500V
Withstand Voltage 100V AC 1 minute
Dielectric Strength 500V 50Hz
Actuation Force 45cN-95cN
Example Uses
The keyswitch is first and foremost design to use in keyboards. Most have a fast response time and because of the pcb and firmware used often times multiple keypresses from different keys at the same time still register. although these keyswitches are predominantly found in keyboards the possibilities for use in other areas is quite broad. There are some mice on the market that use these type of switches for under the two main left and right buttons. Furthermore there are many different types of keyswitches in terms of feel, clicky, quiet, tactile, and are also available with different actuation force.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The major weakness of all keyswitches on the market today is the need for a specific pbc ,layout and the need for a specific housing. The size of most keyswitches has been somewhat standardized over the past few years however, the pcb layout and interface have not.
Example Circuit Schematic
Example diagram of Cherry MX Red switch
linear actuation no sound.
Example diagram, Cherry MX Blue
Tactile and Audible
Example Microcontroller Code
One way to use a keyswitch is as a momentary switch, thusly an code that would take advantage of a momentary switch for a state change will work. {INSERT CODE HERE). The other way is to use it with this code(INSERT CODE HERE) and a keyboard library or firmware like QMK.
awakened from a dream,…no a nightmare,…or a thought I’m not really sure, in a place familiar and alien at the same time…my room, lived in, but not by me…the door before me is open…i move through it…the space seems to shift around me as i proceed inward…till the space is completely unrecognizable as anything familiar…the longer i move…the stranger and less finite the spaces become…morphing…changing…unstructured…in the end i am standing…alone…on a street..i don’t know…in a body i don’t yet recognize…
At right shows the initial sketch concept of having a dSLR capture the movement of a pendulum. There have been a few changes to the system from the illustration at right.
Updated parts can be found below. The plumb of the pendulum is equipped with an RGB LED. The dSLR will capture the path of the plumb with a long exposure. The pivot point of the pendulum is on a multi-arm extension attacked to a stepper. The extension has three positions on each arm, allowing for some degree of adjustment to the physical system. Direction and speed of the stepper will be controlled through a toggle and a radial potentiometer.
My bloodline flows from Sicily, both sides of my family are Sicilian, all of them. Stregheria is the term used for witchcraft in Italy. My mother has always said that she is a witch, and I have always believed her. Many times a child I would find piles of salt outside of doors and windows, I was told that was the remains of evil trying to enter the house. To this day I’m not sure if that was my mom’s ploy to keep us kids from reeking havoc in the house or if it was evil actually being stopped form entering the house. Either way I still have a propensity to believe that it was evil being stopped. Over the years my sense that witch’s blood flows through my veins has become more and more vivid.
Fava beans are said to carry a great deal of luck and were used much like tea leaves, bones, or dust for reading the future path of an inquiring person. Fava beans have a very distinct look light reddish-brown in color with a very dark brown small line at one end.
Heads are all over the place in Sicily. The most prominent is on the Sicilian flag. The head of Medusa sits in the center of the flag, an amulet guarding from bad luck symbolizing a mistrust of fate. The whole symbol referred to as a Trinacria, was often used to ward off evil from homes usually placed behind doors so the evil would turn to stone before entering.
The other head found with ease in Sicily is the Moorish Head, usually made of ceramic and extravagantly decorated. The lore behind these heads varies but generally follows a tail similar to this excerpt from Times of Sicily:
The original folk tale behind the ceramic heads comes from Palermo and tells of a Saracen merchant who falls in love with a beautiful local girl. Together they start a passionate love affair, until the girl discovers her lover has a wife and children waiting for him in his homeland. In a fit of jealously and rage she murders him in his sleep, cutting off his head, so that her lover would stay with her forever. The girl uses the head as a vase to grow a beautiful basil plant. Others seeing her flourishing plant, forge themselves the colourful clay head pots in an attempt to recreate the bountiful fertility.
So when it came time to create an artwork while using a a divination practice I took the ideas from Sicilian heritage and my obsession with action figures and combined them to create a new divination practice that ultimately became the artwork itself. A series of 13 photos were taken of 14 heads. Each toss of the heads yields a different random pattern form the heads. I then layered these photos and applied a variety of transformations to achieve a series of gifs. Here are the original 13 photos without any editing.
Original image from https://www.instagram.com/keys.witches/
Key board switches, or keyswitches as the industry call them, have become somewhat of trend as of late. Most of us have used a keyboard, some of us have thought about what makes a keyboard appealing, and probably fewer have really thought about how a keyboard works and why it feels the way it does. Keyboard customization and small batch manufacturing have given light to a great number of choices within the keyswitch market. This trend or fad, dare I say, has gotten to the point that humans are making artwork based on keyswitches.
In this sensor report I will attempt to make a physical device that shows the physical interface between both the user and the electronics of a keyswitch. As well as addressing the common misconceptions, uses, basic technology, and the steadily growing number of manufacturers.
There are many different types of keyswitches so many so that there is very robust resource located at https://deskthority.net/, here you find lots information about keyboards in general and even information on modding however, what is missing is very specific information regarding how to use the keyswitch outside of normal use cases. The keyswitch itself is such an interesting component with a varied array of feel, form factor, and electrical requirements its very easy to see that there are many more uses than just a keyboard. In doing this sensor report my hope is that others will see what “outside-of-the-board” thinking looks like in regard to keyswitches.
This post is the first in a multi-part series about the keyswitch. The series will document research, testing, and fabrication for a device that will live on the ITP floor at NYU. Ideas and comments are welcome and I will try to incorporate as many suggestions as possible.
For now I will leave you with a images showing some types of keyswitches.
Basic illustration of how a keyboard/keyswitch works.
Kailh Speed Pro Light Green
Kailh Low profile Notebook Switch, for laptop, keyboard scissor switch, clicky type
Sometimes I find myself staring out into space to relive stress and re-center however, lately staring into space hasn’t been enough. So I decided to make my final project an interactive distraction. I wanted to focus on user interaction, making it easy for the user to adjust the output and understand how the changes they were making effected the end result. The ability to re-start the graphic was also important.
Since the UI was an import aspect of this project I wanted to focus on making it easily understandable. My first iteration was not the most user friendly.
In the above version all of the sliders for the starting position of four shapes were grouped together, followed by two sliders that control global variables, followed by sliders for color and stroke for each of the shapes. The order didn’t really make any sense. The other aspect of this interface that I disliked, and pointed out by John Henry, was that the user had to have all the shapes actively on screen. Adding a check-box to allow the user to select what shapes were seen made it so the user had more control over the graphic that was produced.
In the final UI global variables and the ability to re-size and reset the graphic are located at the top of the UI, each shape and all sliders associated with it are grouped together. A check-box turns the shapes on and off. The value is displayed to the right of each slider for those that control the shape’s position. I didn’t feel like it was necessary to display the vale for the color and stroke since those elements don’t change the way the shapes behave, and the values aren’t important for the user to really understand how the changes to the sliders effect the position and size of the shapes.
The images above show some of the combinations produced with the adjustment of various sliders. The first image is “in-set” with the UI showing under it. The other two images show the graphic as “full-screen”.
I would like to continue the development of this sketch there are a few different ides I would like to implement.
I want to be able to mirror the graphic produced into the four quadrants or even make it so the use can determine how many mirrors of the graphic are produced.
The ability to save the graphic as an .svg and then plot it out would be a nice added feature. That would enable the user to create permanent works of generated art and not just use this as a tool for relaxation.
I would like ta add a slider for each shape that would change the spacing between each new object in the series, to open up the patterning a bit.
