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Transparency

I’ve been playing with sharpies on transparent paper. I’d like to make some sort of layered color deconstructible portrait with a sheet for each color overlapping each other. I failed today because of an alignment issue, but I stuck the black layer on a window. It’s very discreet and barely visible in the room, and once you notice it’s enough to see who’s on the portrait. I thought the kids might notice and would get a kick out of it.

Later the sun hit our faces so we lowered the window blind, and it hit me what this whole transparency thing was going to be all about. The reverse projection really makes it pop out. With color layers it’ll be amazing. I like the idea of something that’s barely there most of the time and pops out only with a particular alignment of the Sun.

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Mindstorms Plotter

Robin built a very cool Lego Mindstorms based plotter. I’ve seen him run into issues similar to what I ran into, and solve them. I’ll sometimes attach a monetary prize to some of his Mindstorms projects. Once he’s scratched the itch and wants to move on, but I know a lot of challenges occur not just making a robot work, but making it work well.

For a while there was $5 on making a drawing machine that drew something beyond a basic shape, it didn’t have to be much, just had to be something that proved the machine’s worth. And he’s earned it with this:

He didn’t write the software that turns text into lines, but there were plenty of mechanical challenges to getting the machine consistent enough to make this. Overall I’m blown away by the quality of today’s Mindstorms. Seeing him build his machine reminded me I had this set growing up:

Might have planted some seeds.

In the meantime I’m testing a 10′ deployment, a drawing machine so big one needs a ladder to get to the top. I haven’t ran it yet, but I know there will be new issues arising from the scale. Even just setting the paper is challenging.