Roku has officially escaped the bounds of the computer screen! Here is one cell of Roku working on it’s own. This proves that I can make these (I’ve made 2 cells so far), that the lighting looks awesome and the motion is very controllable. The button pressing action is added, but not to my satisfaction. I’m using the guts from old keyboards to act as the buttons, which is almost working. Re-using the electrical components of the keyboards proved to be really hard; I believe my next attempt will be with reed switches.

So this is what I have before my Thanksgiving vacation. When I return it will be time to hit the ground running and get all of them made. In addition to getting button-pressing working, I also need to be able to control more than 1 at a time… This is the real challenge. I’m completely new to Arduino and hardware in general, so I don’t know my constraints or what’s possible. I’ve heard rumor that controlling upwards of 20 servos from one Arduino isn’t hard to do as long as I’m okay with sacrificing some accuracy. I can deal with that. It looks like I’ll need a heafty power supply in addition to figuring out where that fits into the whole puzzle.

Over the break I’ll be finalizing the cell pattern, and material choices. Translating these models into laser-cut templates and ordering 24 of everything. If everything goes to plan without too much trouble I’ll be showing rapid Roku process and working shots of Roku in action by the New Year.

A quick sketch of what the interaction for browsing a video Q & A might look like.

Since this is a little rough (and only uses images and has no audio) I will explain what you see here. First you watch the video question, which lasts about 5 seconds. The scene zooms out and the already submitted answers pop out into view. The answers play silently on loop, mousing over will cue in the audio. Clicking will zoom it into full screen.

Since there isn’t much background on Blab!, here’s a quick synopsis. I’m working with a small group on designing a tool for flirting online through the use of video messages. The goal is to link up those with few local friends due to being new to an area, busy, or what have you. Mostly to have a little fun online while founding new relationships. It’s been fun so far.

Please sit tight while the design of this space is worked out. Welcome to my Process blog, and the rest of the new leebyron.com. I have big plans for this blog to house my daily musings, which I think are usually interesting if not just worth a chuckle.

I’ll also be rebuilding my portfolio on this website, and this all will eventually replace megamu.com as an active portfolio. I’m not sure what the fate of megamu will become.

Until then, enjoy what little exists here on the blog. More will be posted as days go by.

I’ve started blogging again! I’ve got it all figured out this time. I think this is my dozenth crack at blogging, but I finally have a true reason need and excuse for setting up a blog. Process! Three years and change later the practice of maintaining process drilled into me as a freshman has finally sunken in.

Although I came to this through a different realization. “Process work” was taught to me in theory, not in practice, and our applied methods were really ineffective. We made process books, process posters, and the most common: process piles of crap. All the work I’ve done up until now—just gathered into a heap. Professors looked upon in shame, but no one can deny it’s my favorite method.

Why? It’s easy! Look past the blatant issues of presenting a pile of napkin sketches, and you see the great things about this method. I’m being honest, this is the true process. More importantly, I’m obviously focusing my time on the work and less on prettying up my process in some presentation format.

It’s difficult to look back over the pile of stuff and make something elegant out of it. Very few I know of maintain something elegant throughout the duration of a project. It’s just too much work when I really want to work on getting my real work done. My biggest complaint is “why?” Who is the audience? Is this just for me or is this to show off in the job/client seeking process? A process book’s audience is only those who can see it: myself and the few people I can physically hand it to.

Enter the internet. If the presentation were taken care of, then the only step left is making the pile. My audience now grows orders of magnitude (even though I know process is still all about understanding my own work). The upkeep of this blog will force me to solve one of my biggest issues when approaching design work: visual process. The content here will be informal, but heavily graphical. Images, videos, and stories that suffice to show a present state of what I’m doing.