[2024] Year of Projects and Making
2024 has been quite a challenging year. I did not have a great summer. I had to go down emotionally. But thanks to my good friends, Fabien, Paco, Chanti, Andres, Bob, Anuj, Patty, and Pablo, I was able to keep my head up. I am grateful to all these people. I thank them.
I learned lessons on :
- Self Esteem
- Unhealthy work dynamics
- Toxic assertively
- Boundaries
- Detecting manipulative behaviour
In the end, my professional relationship was terminated abruptly a few days before Christmas, with no reason being given for my performance [on record]. This complicated a few legal things last minute before offices closed. As a student of Karma, I felt this was some balancing effect in Karma. I just need to go on. The world out there is good and nice. Sometimes, you meet the people you have to meet to settle dues and learn lessons. In the end, they are suffering, and their suffering brings you pain. Enough of the cryptic stuff.
You know what? I made a few cool things, which I want to share in this post.
Beer Bottle Washer
I built this machine from grounds up that :
- washes a beer bottle, including the mouth
- disinfects it
- detects a bottle using RFID
- sends data to the internet about the bottle being washed.
- if the bottle is suspected to have a biofilm developed, it is not washed.
Why was it built? Apparently, these bottles are quite heavy and a lot of Co2 is generated in transporting them for washing, especially when dealing with non-standard sizes. This was a part of a PoC and desirability study.
What did I learn? I learned a lot about Fusion 360. I even made a machine to bend plastic to finish the nice look and feel. I learned how to do great wiring, crimping, motor control, and waterproofing. Also, I found "my" industrial design process. I like to begin with cardboard prototypes before jumping into CAD.
Parametric Kitchen Hanger
I moved houses and live further out of the city now. The new house had no furnishing and I needed something to hang things. You see, there are two kinds of people :
- "On the shelf" kind: These tend to keep things outside, arranged, and in view but not hidden
- "In the cupboard" kind: These tend to organise things in cupboards and away from view while having a clear knowledge of where things are.
IMO, many artistic people tend to be "on the shelf" and many project management people tend to be "in the cupboard" kind. There is a pesky middle where no one wants to be, but that is where Sherlock Holmes kind of lives. In the end, it's about the perception of hierarchy in an organisation. I am "on the shelf" kind and want everything I need visible. So, I made this.
The whole thing is attached to the wall using command strips and holds about 7kg of weight. For every 40 cm, I would need to add another wall-pasted command strip. This has been working for me for over a year now.
Teaching
This year, I taught "Emerging Technologies" again with Fabien. It was a blast as always. Students liked it and I learned a lot about AI which was this year's focus.
Theatre
I kept going to theatre classes too but had to cut back due to work. I am not acting in this term's production but hey! I did go to the Christmas Party. Thanks, Sky and Harriet.
Open Controller
I 3D printed, assembled, and shipped an assistive controller for Xbox that lets people operate Xbox using a single hand. It was shipped to Italy. I hope the person who received it, is enjoying it.
Something to show luxury properties
I worked on weekends for a while, to bring this to life with friends at Prototipalo. I can't tell you anything more.
Opendrain
I love sprouted Bengal gram. It was getting hard to keep them moist and dry at the same time to get them to sprout. So, I built this simple attachment that takes any glass jar from the supermarket and balances it on an IKEA organisation container.
SpainFrame
After seeing this, I had the idea of trying to change the distribution model. The aforementioned company has a D2C model, I wanted to make it B2B. So, I would sell it to the souvenir shops in Madrid. The whole plan failed terribly as I wasn't able to convince anyone to buy. But, I learned a lot about :
- My rejection anxiety
- How pricing works in souvenirs
- How to get feedback in the streets
Now, I lack the will to iterate on the idea. I have some great feedback from people.
Disorientation Artefacts
I will write a detailed post about it soon.
This was a project I did as a part of my research group at Centro de Estudios - Museo National de Reina Sofia.
Here is the official brief :
DATA DISORIENTATION: An Interactive Exhibition
Exploring the Digital Labyrinth of Modern Consciousness In an era where information floods our senses and digital surveillance has become our constant companion, "Data Disorientation" presents a provocative triptych of interactive installations that challenge our relationship with the invisible forces shaping our daily lives. Through design fiction and dark humour, these artefacts investigate the uncanny valley between human agency and algorithmic control, emotional authenticity and technological dependence.
As a part of our team, Ivan asked me to help him hack a tape recorder that was used in Shilpa Gupta's exhibition in Centro Botin, Santander.
Model Making Workshop
I will write a detailed post about it soon.
This summer I went to Santander to attend a workshop on model making. We learned so many techniques like Resin Casting, woodworking, Clay Casting, screen printing, metal plate printing, and metal casting.
My final product was this aluminium soap dryer.
Wolf Installation
I made a small installation at my ex-employer's annual event. The idea behind this was Nahun's. I used a blaze pose media pipe to show people's eyes on a background that was actually a shader. It was super fun and we did the project in a few days, thanks to Claude. The project was built using p5js.
Open Bender
I made this tool when I needed a simple wire heater to bend 2mm acrylic sheets. Now I am planning to sell these as kits for other makers to use in their projects. Sheet bending can transform how projects look. It has a Reprap element too. The cover for the circuit side is made from the machine itself using bent plastic... ah yes! USB-C powered with thermal compensation for the nichrome wire.
To be continued in 2025
Film Digitalisation
This is quite a challenging project. My client has a film school and he wants to digitalise 16mm film of his students. We have a projector that needs to be hacked. The project is from 1953. We are almost there.
Factory Controller
This is another challenging project. The idea is to automate a machine that produces something. I learned a bit about client management in this project. The client was co-creating the machine with me but did not tell me that he was co-creating it with me. I was hesitant to ask too as I did not want to push him away. Hence, every time I did something, he modified the requirements a bit. In the end, I learned the lesson of getting clear requirements, a bit of LVGL, and a lot about Home Assistant.
Simultaneous Smart Grid Model
I worked on this project with my friends from Prototipalo. This is also a lesson on getting requirements straight. Initially, when the budget was finalised the project seemed simple. Just a bunch of lights and a stepper. Then, when I started doing the electronics, all of this had to move simultaneously with LED animations, plus moving 12 servos in sync with the stepper and managing three switches and 12 states at the same time. This was one of the most complicated projects I delivered this year. In the end, we used three Arduinos talking to each other using serial. But, the client was happy.
Swimming Paddle
My nephew, Sebastian, likes to swim on his little dino. He needed something to raft through the pool after he got excited watching Olympic rafting on the TV in the summer. So, I made one for him using some Mercadona broomsticks and 3D printing.
5G Infrastructure Demo at Mobile World Congress
I was also remotely involved in doing the electronics for this train which detected voltages from the rail and changed behaviour. It was made for [redacted] along with a lot of mechanical engineering from Prototipalo. The highlight of the entire thing was that the king of Spain saw the project and appreciated the demo.
AI Agent that checks for greenwashing and ESG claims
This was a project for my ex-company for one of our clients. They needed an internal tool that allowed them to verify the marketing copy against several EU norms and provide actionable feedback on the copy as well as train the team on writing better copy. The training part was super important. The demo AI bot was implemented a few days before I was let go, but from the initial testing, the team already gave good feedback. The tool has a simple architecture with a langchain backend and some prompt engineering that consults a vector database which allows the LLM to provide highly contextualised results with some NLP functionalities that identify certain words/phrases that can be reworded.
Native Mobile Apps for Commercial Events
This was my first mobile app that was live in both Apple and Android Playstore. The idea was to build an app that allows attendees at our event to see who is around and keep up with the schedule. They can see events happening and details about the speakers. The key takeaway was using Expo's managed builds to deploy apps to both play stores and then working with app reviewers over weeks to get the app approved. The best thing is that this app runs on a no-code software package in a react native shell. So, the team can just change the Excel sheet and "boom" use it for the next year instead of paying a license every year.
What's ahead?
This year, I am looking for gigs as a contractor. So, if you have something you want to build or chat about things like hardware, design, AI, design Fiction, or speculative design, please reach out to me here.