Sketching in Hardware 2011

Sketching in Hardware 2011
Re-inventions and Improvements on
Toolkits and Workshops

July 30 2011 at Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

Shigeru Kobayshi (International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences [IAMAS])

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Hi, I’d like to talk about re-inventions and improvements on toolkits and workshops as case
studies.

Sketching in Hardware 2011 | Shigeru Kobayashi
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I worked for Roland, a digital musical instrument company. I’m teaching at a small public
school of design and media arts, and I developed toolkits such as Gainer and Funnel.
Regarding Funnel, I’m really happy. Since Jeff contributed many things and introduced about
recent updates to you yesterday.

Photo: Shunsuke Takawo

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This is an example of Gainer hardware.

Photo: NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]

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This is an example of usage with a breadboard, jumper wires and various components.

Photo: Kenichi Hagihara

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I created a large scale media installation consisting of 200 breadboards and 11,000 wires
with my colleagues.

IAMAS Gangu Project - Work in Progress (AXIS Gallery, Tokyo, 2008)

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And our school exhibits regularly at a design gallery to show results as prototypes.

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I also write articles about prototyping for MAKE magazine in Japanese regularly.

Photo: Yosuke Nakanishi

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And wrote a book about Gainer toolkit

Photo: Kenichi Hagihara

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and Arduino to introduce the fun and importance of prototyping to students, hobbyists,
designers, artists and engineers.

FIO/Arduino Fio

FIO 4 x 4 (December, 2010)
Designed by Shigeru Kobayashi

Funnel I/O (July, 2008)

FIO (December, 2009)
and SparkFun

Arduino Fio (March, 2010)
and SparkFun

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I also designed Arduino Fio with SparkFun Electronics as a open hardware product derived
from LilyPad Arduino.

Overview

1.Hardware sketching workshops w/ BlinkM & Craft ROBO
2.Small toolkits to ﬁll gaps existing toolkits
3.Collaborative work with Nissha Printing Co., Ltd.
4.Esper Domino (student work)

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Today, I’d like to talk about experiences regarding re-inventions and improvements through
the process of expanding the idea of ‘prototyping’, a case study about a real project and
questions about possibilities of ‘productizing’ open source hardware products.

Case Study 1: LED Light Workshop

• A workshop to introduce ideas of hardware sketching and
personal fabrication

• Hold 7 workshop since September 2010

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• Design light patterns with BlinkM Sequencer
• Design lamp shades with Illustrator or Raven, then
‘fabricate’ with a Craft ROBO

• Utilizing smart LEDs as a material and tinkering about
both styling and engineering are keys

• Asked participants sharing data online

BlinkM + a battery pack Craft ROBO
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Hardware Sketching

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To compare with ‘idea sketching’, I call as ‘hardware sketching’, but it’s same as ‘sketching
in hardware’

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Nice thing about digital fabrication is making models in multiple sizes is really easy.
Participants could compare or combine different size models.

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He found an interesting aspect through tinkering.

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It was a few hours long workshop, and participants presented their interesting ‘sketches’ in
the end.

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I’d like to show short movies from a different workshop.

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The ﬁrst idea was projecting numbers on a wall.

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The second ideas was projecting shadows on a wall.

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This is the last example. He really inspired by a famous lamp, so he fabricated pieces with a
Craft ROBO and designed lighting patterns with a BlinkM.


• Proposed a way to introduce possibilities of personal
fabrication and make derivatives based on others work

• A few participants utilized multiple BlinkMs to create rich
experiences

• Found that for product design students, making by hand
was easier than designing with Illustrator and Craft ROBO

• I’d like to explore more deeper by combining hand working
and machine working such as laser cutting

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Case Study 2: Domain Speci c Toolkits

• Designed toolkits over existing toolkits for workshops
• Size and battery operation was important
• Since most participants were non-engineers (i.e. marketers
and designers) snap ‘n’ connect sensors and actuators were
important

• Seeed Studio’s Grove looked suitable, but wanted to show
possibilities of downsizing

[trend?]

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Since TinkerKit was not available at that time.

Case Study 2: Domain Speci c Toolkits 1/2

• Utilized BlinkMuino to make BlinkMs as tiny Arduino boards
and developed simple PCBs

• BlinkMuino Shield
• Twig for BlinkM
• Begin with writing sketches with normal Arduino boards
with serial monitoring, then switch to BlinkMuino to build
small prototypes

• Battery powered operation made it possible to embed into
small dirty models made from cardboards or Styrofoam

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Twig for BlinkM BlinkMuino Shield
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It’s a kind of collaboration between ThingM’s BlinkM and Seeed Studio’s Grove.


• Designed a Stem for Arduino Fio to mate with Twigs to
make it possible to support rechargeable battery operation
and wireless connection

• By externalizing resource consuming algorithms such as
Bayesian networks to a PC side, make it possible to
implement rich experiences in a short time

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It’s a kind of collaboration between SparkFun’s Arduino Fio and Seeed Studio’s Grove. In the
near future, it’s possible to design bridges like this for TinkerKit etc.

Case Study 3: Nissha Printing Co., Ltd.

• Started a collaborative study with Nissha Printing Co., Ltd.
since April 2010, the theme was ‘new feels and sensing for
touch panels’

• Nissha started as a printing company, then expanded their
business to decorative printings for various products and
touch panels

• They wanted to explore new ideas or applications of touch
panels

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• We developed 3 prototypes for two sub-themes
• First sub-theme was seals. Since seals are still the most
trusted way of certiﬁcation in Japan. So we tried to propose
a novel way of interaction for touch panels.

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As you see, the user can put stamps on the iPad with a device. Actually, we didn’t modify the
iPad. We just developed the devices and the application for iPad.


• The second sub-theme was new interfaces for page
ﬂipping

• Various eBook readers, such as Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s
iPad, have been proposed, but the interfaces are still work
in progress

• Flipping a page by a button press, a touch or a swipe
gesture is OK for reading page by page, but not
comfortable to ‘browse pages’ with paper magazines

• So we proposed two interfaces as prototypes

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We call the ﬁrst one as ‘force sensor’. With very thin force sensor attached on each side of the
frame, the user can ﬂip pages at various speeds without disturbing contents in the display
panel.


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The second one is ‘flip sensor’. By flipping PET film based thin sensors on each side, the user
can flip pages. If flip a sensor, flip a page. If flip multiple sensors at once, flip multiple pages
accordingly.


• We had to develop these three prototypes in two months
• To realize, we utilized various open source products
• Arduino Fio based PCB: an Arduino clone with a on-
board battery charger in a small form factor

• SoftModem: for communication between an iPad and a
board via a headphone jack as audio signals

• Leaves: an open source framework for eBooks
• We continue collaborative studies to explore more
applications

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The soft modem board is also available at SparkFun as ‘Audio Jack Modem for iPhone and
Android’.

Case Study 4: Esper Domino

• Designer: Yasuyuki ‘Jarashi’ Suki
• Visualize invisible networks physically with electronic
devices like dominoes

• Award-winning piece at
14th Japan Media Arts Festival etc.

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The last case study is a student project. Esper Domino is designed by Yasuyuki Suki. It’s an
electronic domino to visualize invisible networks physically. Please watch a short movie.

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It’s a set of dominoes. But unlike normal dominoes, falls without touching each other. The
user can change IDs by shaking to create sequences. By conﬁguring a sequence, or
combining with normal dominoes, a player can enjoy in various ways.


The idea sketch
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This is the idea sketch of Esper Domino. From a product design viewpoint, it’s just a
rectangular parallelepiped. So physical interaction was the key. Frankly speaking, I felt that
too straightforward when I heard his idea at ﬁrst time.


The ﬁrst prototype
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But he realized in very short time with utilizing a 3d printer and existing modules.


The shell of the 1st prototype (built with 3d printing)
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This is the outside of the ﬁrst prototype. Since he had no time for ﬁnishing, the pieces were
just printed by the 3d printer.


Miga NanoMuscle purchased from SparkFun

The PCB of the 1st prototype
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This is the inside of the ﬁrst prototype. Key components are a XBee RF modem and a metal
muscle actuator purchased from SparkFun. By combining existing modules, he could develop
a prototype in a short while.


Comparison between prototypes from 1st (right) to 4th (left) and official domino piece
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This is the changes about prototypes. The rightmost one is the first. The leftmost one is a
normal domino to compare with. As you see, the fourth prototype is mostly same as normal
domino. The first prototype requires a PC to demonstrate and runs only one or two hours, so
exhibiting for a whole day was a big hassle since he had to change batteries several times per
a day. The final prototype is stand alone, and runs over eight hours. So much improved in
comparison to the first prototype.


a derivative a derivative

LilyPad Arduino Arduino Fio

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This is the inside of the fourth prototype. He derived the third and fourth prototype from
Arduino Fio. This is really interesting for me, since we derived Arduino Fio from LilyPad
Arduino. So these prototypes were derivatives of LilyPad Arduino even though looks really
different. Regarding Esper Domino, I just gave him a few suggestions, but by utilizing open
hardware and 3d printing technology, he created ﬁne prototypes through iteration processes.

Question 1
How many people have an iPhone 4?

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In the end of my presentation, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.

Question 2
How many people using with a case or bumper?

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Thank you very much. I’d like to explain why I asked these questions.

http://www.hacoa.com/ http://inter-culture.jp/

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This is an iPhone 4 cover made by Hacoa and Inter Culture. The former is a Japanese
company who are a small manufacturer dedicated for wood products, and the latter is a 3d
printing fab. They manufacture high quality cases with user customize options. When I
looked their products, for me, iPhone 4 began to seem not ‘A product’ anymore but ‘A
component’. I mean, iPhone 4 is A component and accomplished in a user’s hands. This is
just my personal interpretation, but I was really inspired by this experience to think about
possibilities of non mass production utilizing ‘made by hand’ and novel fabrication
technologies such as 3d printing. Since there are no big differences between ‘prototypes’ and
‘products’ in these domains.

‘Mountain Guitar’ by Junichi Kanebako (Sketching 2007)

‘Jamming Gear’ by So Kanno and Kenichiro Saigo (Sketching 2008)

‘Esper Domino’ by Yasuyuki ‘Jarashi’ Suki (Sketching 2011)
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In the past Sketching meetings, I introduced student projects. Actually, none of them were
productized. It’s true that we focused on exploring possibilities of electronic toys rather than
aiming at commercialization at big toy companies. But we’d like to ‘productize’ items like this
as open hardware products. I’ll start the project real soon now.

What’s Next?

• How to ‘productize’ prototypes without using traditional
mass fabrication technologies such as molds that requires
huge investments?

• Combining handcraft and new fabrication technologies
such as 3d printing and utilizing open software and
hardware will be the key

• Let’s try to productize casually and provide as case studies
• Of course, will be open hardware products

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Start to have discussions with graduated students and colleagues.

Thank you very much for listening
and please give me suggestions!

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Sketching in Hardware 2011

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