I wrote this post a bit before the assignment was posted so it doesn’t quite follow the guidelines, but here goes anyway: http://web.media.mit.edu/~arlduc//process/2012/02/22/EEG_Adventures/

This cotton man serves as your significant other. Someone you love, care and sometime get angry at.

How it works:

Once you own it, you can have the other person record his/her voice according to your actions. It has speaker, recorder and sensors build in.

Top of the head is a “caress” sensor, if you give soft strokes on the head it will play pre-recorded sound, such as a happy song or something pleasant..

When you rub the tummy, the face will blush.

Inside the head is a felt ball with pressure sensor, when you get upset at the person and squeeze it hard or sits on it, it will play the pre-recorded sound ” Stop it, I am sorry, please forgive me!”

I’ve stitched together a couple of ideas. None of them, I think, encapsulates all of what I would like to try for. I was doing a lot of hard-thinking, drinking, etc., hoping for a Don Draper-esque moment of inspiration, but alas, I was not dressed for it. Some touchstones:

• utility
• amusement
• extensibility
• reproducibility
• use a novel sensor
• cheap
• people might want such a thing

Mega-Scale

Simple, clean kitchen or mail scale. Set to one weight and repeatedly weighs it. This project would emphasize more the consumer product elements of DIY manufacture, and less the fun “make something amusing” part, but such is what it is.

Mega Bike Turn Signals + Brake Light

‘Tis what it says. Turn signals and a brake light. Might be neat to come up with a whole bike-mounted sensor stack, but it’s hard to conceive of things that are not made redundant by a handlebar-mounted smart phone. GPS, odometer, accelerometer, etc.

Phone Clobbering Mega-Cube

A shielded boxin which you deposit your phone, smashing its reception and giving you some freedom. Variant includes timer and lock, so you cannot succumb to your base desires for connectivity.

Detail of top, showing potential lock, countdown timer, etc.

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