Siyuan Hu's Techie Blog

Soldering We soldered 16 LEDs to the Adafruit Trellis board and tested them with an Arduino program. Assembling Later we embedded the Trellis board into the project box that we made earlier, and soldered the four potentiometers simply in series.

3D Printed Project Box We used a 3D printing machine in Leslie Lab to make our project box. The machine was fairly easy to manipulate and the instructions were straightforward. It took over 10 hours in total to print out all the parts of the box. We finished assembling the parts after the printing was completed. One thing to improve: We actually printed the frame part and bottom part twice because during the first printing, we manually modify the design files to stick them together so that we thought it would reduce the printing time. However, that sort of changed the original height setting and the assembled box was shallower than expected. During the second printing, we printed those two parts separately and everything worked out perfectly. Here are some photos:

Mini MIDI Controller - Ideation and planning <Project Name: Drummy OR M&M> Project idea In this project, we are trying to build a portable Trellis MIDI instrument that has a pleasant physical form (making users want to press!) and can send MIDI notes signal to any MIDI-enabled applications (MIDI Studio on OSX and some iOS apps). The mini controller has a 3d-printed case housing one 4x4 trellis and 4 potentiometers ideal for a 16-button drum pad. Technically, with a little programming ingenuity, it is possible for the controller to send any kind of MIDI command through USB. The idea is inspired a device called UNTZtrument, an open-source grid controller based on the Adafruit Trellis button platform. Target audience People who are interested in music and technology and want to have a handy and portable MIDI sequencer that can entertain their music addiction! Project meaning Visualize music beats for the music player on

P ersonal A assistant F or W eather A nd S tyle  A dvice Haven't you ever woken up in the morning, opened up your closet and thought what you were going to wear? You spend 15 minutes of your morning standing and staring at your clothes, wondering what you are going to put on. And THEN, after you put clothes on, you realize you forgot to check the weather to make sure your dress attire coincides with this extremely inconsistent New York City weather. And upon checking, you realize it is scorching hot out (although mid-February) and you have to completely start all over again! It's a mess!  Well, we have created an everyday solution to this mess, thanks to PAFWASA! PAFWASA is a personal assistant whose job is to assist its user in general weather advice and style tips the second he/she wakes up in the morning and opens his/her closet to start the day.  PAFWASA lives in your closet (or a drawer if your wish). Assuming the closet light is turned on every day he/s

Project Inspiration: In light of the impending presidential elections that are pulverizing today's journalism and thus constant references to our government, nation, and policies, we have decided to build an interactive toy for young kids, to help brainwash them to become as American-strong as possible. (better to hop on the bandwagon as early as possible!) Project Details: Essentially, the goal of this toy is to force children, or users, to feel a sense of pride (or hatred) towards the United States, via American propaganda. In our toy, specifically, we will be using our national hymn, "The Star Spangled Banner" and American flags to help accentuate this goal. Our toy is geared for kids between the ages of 2-6, preferably, although it can work for anyone really. The toy is meant to keep the user's interest by being able to control the speed of the twirling flags and also with the flashing LEDs that light up synonymously with the music. When the infa