Final Project: Sensor

For the sensor, I decide to put it in the cushion of the seat. The cushion consists of a wooden board on the bottom with a foam pad on top of it. There are a few holes already in the board that I can run the sensor wires from the cushion to the bottom of the chair.

I started out making my force sensor for the chair. I started by taking the two wire-mesh pads from the video theatre mid-term project, and cutting them down to approximately a 2" x 3" rectangle. I was able to attain conductive foam from the NYU computer store, and then cut that down to a size just bigger than the wire-mesh pads. I placed the foam between the wire-mesh and placed them between the seat's board and foam pad. Unfortunately this sensor was unable to get a large range of readings. I did not want to make the sensor larger to fit the full size of the cushion because the added material would increase stuffing size to be bigger than the cover. So I changed out my sensor for a large force sensor from the computer store.

The force sensor was thin so I did not have to worry about too much stuffing in the cushion and the cover being able to contain all of it. This new sensor caused little changes in the cushion allowing it to retain it's shape.

Final Project: Chair

I was able to find a 1950s pool-side chair from Brooklyn junk. I needed the chair to recall the 1950s so the correlating date of production, 1959, of the movie Come Back, Africa and the travel catalogue Colourful South Africa will become more evident.

I also wanted a chair that had a stable seat and arms so that movement within the seat would be an inclination. I did consider a beach chair for this project, but after testing one out it did not induce movement. The swaying of the cloth seating induced the user to stay still. I concluded that a stable seat would allow more movement to occur than a swaying seat. Weight distribution is allowed a greater range on the stable seat because the user can have more movement upon a stable object instead of a moving object.

The cushion of the chair is easily taken off. It is attached to the bottom bars with three screws. This allows me to insert the sensor and do tests without needing the whole chair. Also having the bottom of the chair being a few bars to support the cushion leaves me with a lot of room to attach the Arduino and Breadboard.