I’ve started working on a taxonomy of feedback for physical computing. I know, “aren’t there enough taxonomies already”? Well, yes, so what’s one more… It’s not so much that there’s something wrong with the ones I’ve found so far, they just tend to be either narrowly focused — task focused VR or haptics — or are behind a paywall and not easy to share with others.

The goal here is to chart out all the possibilities in an attempt to get people thinking about tactile/haptic feedback from some new angles. Honestly, if I see one more tactor-anything I’m going to hit with a hammer. Enough with the pager motors already! We have 5 senses (arguably 20-something), let’s use more of them.

Starting out, I’m using a simple tree: person -> body part -> sense

person->finger->pressure (sensitive)
person->finger->temperature (sensitive)
person->arm->elbow->temperature (normal)
person->leg->foot->sole->pressure (weight)

So, two questions:

1) Has someone already done a good job of this and I simply haven’t found it yet?

2) Is there a preferred format for this sort of thing that’s easy to mail around and text edit?

(p.s. Yes it’s arguably a folk taxonomy but I’m in no mood for pedantry.)

Slowly catching up on all the blogging stuff I ignored while building a lasersaur and doing Stuff That Pays the Bills.

In 15 words or less, complete this sentence: “I want to be a designer because…”

“they solve problems, and I want to teach other people how to solve their problems.”

I’m starting to experiment with a shapeways store.

Currently there’s just an antenna mount of interest only amateur radio people, but I’m working on a few more items on the store that I am prototyping with my Makerbot Cupcake before uploading to Shapeways.

…or be glad that their neighbor did?”

Recently I picked up a Barnes and Noble NOOKColor. It’s an Android-based, e-reader/tablet with a good web browser and PDF display package. I don’t plan on buying many e-books (I prefer paper), but having something bigger than a phone and smaller than a laptop that can display a PDF or browse a “howto” site while I’m in the studio is seriously useful.

Except for one slight problem.

Like most tablets/e-readers, it’s meant to be hand-held and not parked on a bench. If I lay it flat on my bench it’s hard to read, and while it was amusing to have my hand model hold it, that didn’t work well either.

So after a frustrating day of trying to use it to browse instructions on some MakerBot mods…

[facepalm]

… a trivial NOOKColor holder.

[This is going to get a bit nerdy, but don't worry, I save the hardcore stuff for my nerd blog.]

I had an idea recently for a different way of making ground plane antennas for the 2M band. Don’t worry about what they actually are, suffice it to say that they occupy a lot of volume and are a pain to transport. Imagine a pyramid made out of four 60cm coathangers with another 60cm coathanger coming out the top of the pyramid and you’ve got a typical ground plane antenna. On the other hand, they’re cheap, easy to build and can be tuned/adjusted with the SWR meter in a decent VHF radio.

(Ok, that’s pretty much all the geek stuff out of the way. See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?)

So here’s the problem. What if you want to toss a ground plane antenna in the back of your car, carry it somewhere on your bicycle, or have it as part of an emergency “go bag”? Are you really going to cart around a delicate bit of metal sculpture that occupies a rectangle a half-meter on each side and a meter tall? No, you aren’t.

This became a problem with an interesting combination of design and fabrication: How I could make it easier to transport and store but still be easy to set up and function correctly as an antenna? The idea of making it fold up seemed like the most obvious solution, but folding means moving parts which means more chance of coming apart. However, most people use this sort of antenna in a fixed location, often inside an attic or outside resting on a flat surface. At worst it might be used outside in windy situation and I’m thinking about a second version for that sort of environment. I started my process with the traditional sketching but instead of making foamcore models I decided to fire up the MakerBot Cupcake I built last winter and start out with ABS prototypes.

Total time spent modeling and printing each iteration was about an hour, and it was easy to fit that in at night after dinner over a few nights. The first few didn’t work very well but I quickly hit one that did work and that was a relatively simple piece of plastic. (Ok, it worked better after a bit of filing and sanding, but it worked.) Within a few minutes I’d bent and cut some welding rod, soldered a stick of it to an adapter, tweaked the resonance a bit, and I had a working antenna for not very much money.

The problem quickly became “How do I share this with other amateur radio operators?” Sure, I posted the STL on Thingiverse, but you have to own or know someone with a 3D printer for that to be of any use.

I think the answer is going to be Shapeways. I’ve ordered printed items from them in the past and while they aren’t cheap, they have wonderful print quality and ship worldwide. I’ve started the process of setting up a store there and in the spirit of Amateur Radio will offer my antenna mount for minimal markup.

In a few months we’ll see how this experiment worked: Can a design concept prototyped on a hobby 3D printer be turned around and sold for a small profit by a commercial fabrication shop? What are the unexpected surprises or hidden gotchas that need to be solved for this to be more than a hobby and instead a viable business model?