My internship office over the summer had a levitating lighbulb, that was able to be turned on/off with a touch of the platform it was levitating from. It was pretty cool and fun to play with.

To get more familiar with CAD, I first made this thing. Both wheels turn in the same direction, and the ridges at the end of the small wheel slide perfectly along the groves on the larger wheel.

I want to make something that levitates. There are several options for this: magnetic levitation and acoustic levitation. I figured magnetic levitation would be more straighforward so I went with that.

Next, I needed to come up with something to levitate, like the lightbulb at my internship. For now, I decided on making an alarm clock. You can control settings via capacitative touch buttons on the platform and it could be one sunrise clocks that gradually get brighter in the morning to help you wake up more naturally. Or so they say. Idk.

Anyways, here’s the rudimentary design. Very subject to change.



###Update 10/3:

I’m taking another class this semester called Interactive Music Systems (6.809/21M.835) that explores digital synthesis of music and design of engaging music applications, and I thought it’d be cool to make something at the end of the semester the incorporates the skills I gained from both classes.

I’m teaming up with Elliott on the final progect, building an electronic guitar. (http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/863.18/EECS/people/elliott/weeks/f1.html) He’s going to work on the capacitative touch sensors on the neck, and I’m going to work on the strumming part. We’ll also work on separate outputs, with one of us working on the speakers and one of us working on the lights.

Hopefully spitting up the work like this will give us enough time to not just make the guitar work, but to make it work well and incorporate some other features of an actual guitar, such as bends. This will be a challening task that requires our different sections to communicate.