The end

So the final project:
Materials: High density polyethylene "leaf" shapes routed by the CNC router, with pockets for solar panels and channels for wires. Formica laminated on top of the plastic, both to hide the wires and give it a more finished feel. The Formica is laminated on with contact cement.

Structure: To hold the array to the wall, Mat and I designed a basic structure for which I made the routing file. It essentially consisted of two boxes at each end of the "leaf" axis. One box housed the sensor and the circular plates attached to the leafs to make the spinning motion smoother, the other box provided space for the servos, attachment mechanisms from leaf to servo, wiring and arduinos.

Programming: The leaves will move in a solar tracking motion while the array is plugged in. When someone comes close to the sensor, the leaves will finish the cycle they are in and then begin to respond to the proximity of the person to the sensor and flip depending on the distance they are away. This way, the closer you are the more the panels flip over, etc.

Solar panels: In the end, it was most efficient to use normal coated solar panels instead of the broken ones because they would have a more consistent voltage and would make the whole system work much more consistently.

Installation: In the end, we decided it would be best to hang the stucture on one end, and mount it to the wall on the other. However, it turned out that bolting the whole thing into the wall would simply not work because the drywall was not strong enough to hold our entire surface. We ended up building supports for the back of the surface and hung it on the front side.

Process: Related to final production, this is sort of how the work ended up being divided... Chris spent a lot of time with the CNC router getting final files routed, Mat and I were there as well to help out. We spend an entire night putting individual leaves together. I did most of the gluing, Jason and Alyssa soldered solar panels, Mat and Chris attached servos to the glued together pieces. This process was a lot slower than we had expected. Turns out the laminating idea, which we thought would save us time, actually cost us a lot of time. Another night was spend starting the assembly, wiring, and troubleshooting. The last night we spent mounting to the wall, troubleshooting our servos (and not studying for Structures).

The middle (issues, reworking, redrawing)

The middle section of this project essentially consisted of drawing, redrawing, testing, redrawing, playing around with different kinds of solar panels, and redrawing again)
Group meetings were mostly problem solving session, and we broke into smaller groups a lot to work on smaller issues (Mat, Chris and I would talk about the design, the mechanisms to actually make this thing move, materials, etc) Jason and Michelle mostly worked on white papers during the middle portion of this project and Alyssa helped with miscellaneous tasks. We also ordered solar panels and began soldering and testing those.
Although the design remained relatively similar, it changed slightly every week because of the differences in materials, solar panels, and moving mechanisms we were implementing.

The beginning

So in the beginning there were a lot of struggles.
It was extremely difficult for us (and I think this applies to all the groups) to focus in on what they wanted their project to be.
Every week we would come up with ideas and then feel completely shot down by the end of class on Friday. Every week we felt like we had to start over again.
Week 1: Very basic brainstorming. We hared our interests, aspirations, topics we thought could evolve into interesting projects. Some of the outcomes were projects that interacted with all five senses, projects that improved the quality of life, or tried to conserve resources (our main interest was water). The project evolved into a water purifying system using algae that could fuction both inside and outside. A sort of cubicle system in the Duderstadt center that housed living algae. After further discussion, however, this idea seemed implausible because of the enormous amount of energy that would have to be put into the upkeep of such a system.
Week 2: Microlittering was brought up in one of the meetings and we became interested in a way of either collecting or bringing attention to this problem. The proposal became a collecting bin for microlitter that attempted to harvest energy from burning cigarette butts that were stuck into little slots. By using thermoelectrics we could harvest energy from the burning cigarettes, have algae purifying the air to reduce second hand smoke, and at the same time purify water to dispense to the smoker when he had finished smoking.
Week 3: Proposal shot down by professors again, we go back to the drawing board. An email redefining, or grounding project guidelines was sent out. And the group decided to use kinetic sculptures such as the wooden mirror as inspiration to create a moving array of solar panels. Using mirrors, pistons, and solar panels, we envisioned an array that could be controlled by people moving parabolic mirrors along its surface, sensors picking up the increase in light from the mirrors focusing extra sunlight on them, and then moving according to that stimulus.
g this.

Week 4: None of the professors seemed necessarily excited about this idea either, so we had to redefine once again. We had another major brainstorming session. I suggested we start by writing down everything that was wrong with current solar panels. The list looked something like this: flat, dark, fixed location (which is usually inaccessible), fragile, expensive, not visually pleasing. We became very interested in using fragile unprotected solar cells and finding a way to still use them efficiently in a solar array by finding a way to protect them from the elements. Flipping seemed the most logical way of doinfl
Week 4: Starting to grab hold of something. Finally. So this project was going to be a solar array. The panels would have to be symmestrical if they weren't going to run into one another as they ipped. Chris and Mat and I sat down several times discussing this. A wavelike shape seemed the most logical, not only because of its easy implementation in a flipping mechanism but also because it would go well with the wave-like motion we wanted our array to perform.