An Interactive Science Exhibit

Task

The brief was to design an interactive science exhibit under the context of the pandemic, implying any interactions with the exhibit’s mechanism should be indirect (using an Arduino microcontroller). Due to the remote education arrangement, the project was compromised by using a controller simulated on TinkerCAD.

Solution

I decided to design a stroboscopic zoetrope, which fascinated me as a child. To better demonstrate the principles of animation and stroboscopic imaging, as well as adding some elements of interactions, I included two knobs which allow the ‘visitors’ to adjust the flickering rate and speed of the disk respectively. An LED changes from red to green when the visitor successfully sync the two rates to create an animation, adding a sense of reward.

March - April 2021