Progress of project for week #

Week 1 (14th May- 20th May)

15th May 2018 – A dear group member left us and we are on the verge of collapsing. Basically, we are exploring various different projects and are on the hunt for a scapegoa… *cough* I mean group member.

16th May 2018 – We have decided that our project will be on VR treadmills. Fingers crossed for our new sacrificial lamb *cough* I mean group member.

17th May 2018-20th May 2018 – Research on current commercial VR treadmills currently in the market was done and our 1st prototype is created. We have scheduled a meeting with Professor Ho on 21st May regarding our prototype and our new group member. Full speed ahead!!!

 Week 2 (21st May – 27th May)

21st May 2018– Introducing our new group member, Jason!!! He is currently studying for an accountancy degree, so Marcus and I made him the treasurer :). Our first prototype fell in favour of another random prototype we thought about, so it is back to the drawing board. We also named ourselves ‘Tilted’, after the random prototype that was supposed to be a backup plan.

23rd May 2018– Internal fight within ‘Tilted’. So basically, there are a few VR treadmills in the market that do not require you to walk, and these VR equipment have A LOT of negative feedback regarding VR sickness, including Cybershoes, where the user walks while sitting down. I also did a lot of research and realised that VR sickness will be extremely prevalent in our project. My argument is that since there are so many complains, we should modify/change our project so that the chances of VR sickness is minimised and low. Marcus’ argument is that everyone has a different susceptibility to VR sickness, but that does not stop anyone from putting it out in the market. As quoted from Marcus, ‘Even drinking water in a car causes motion sickness in some people. Does that mean we should ban all drinks in the aeroplane?’. I find his argument highly flawed but at the same time, I do not have the power to convince him with my stance. Jason is sitting on the fence and I am just hoping that our workstation is setup asap so that I can test out the amount of VR sickness I experience when playing a VR game seated.

25th May 2018– Prof Ho defended my stance, HOORAY!!! Marcus is still not convinced though. Unfortunately, we will need to wait quite some time for our supporting equipment so testing will have to wait. Our random prototype design is also flawed with a lot of potential problems so we still have a long looong way to go. Prof Ho told us not to consider the head/body split at the moment as it is difficult and not necessary.

HOMEWORK OF THE WEEK

• For each person to come up with 3 prototypes and show it to others on 29th May 2018

Week 3(28th May – 3rd June)

28th May 2018– Regarding the internal fight last week, Marcus has informed me that he has tested out playing his VR set while tilting his body and the motion sickness is minimal. He also stated that as motion sickness decreases as the user gets accustomed to the device, we should not care about it at all. While I am still extremely dubious (he may have an extremely high tolerance to VR sickness?), I have to let go on the issue for now.

29th May 2018– Homework submission!!! Discord failed us repeatedly but we managed to communicate enough to come up with a final prototype. Our designs can be viewed in the design specifications tab 🙂

HOMEWORK OF THE WEEK

• To come up with further ways to improve our final prototype
• To find an appropriate chair to use for our final prototype

 Week 4(4th June – 10th June)

4th June 2018– Marcus recommended that we use an IKEA snille chair as he has one at home and the chair mount provides a space for us to place our electronic components & joystick. Jason and I do not have a chair to recommend so we are sticking to that.

6th June 2018– First project meeting!!! Overall response was good and much to my surprise, we were not roasted at all (I think it is because of the lack of time). Kanesh suggested the use of magnetic joysticks instead of mechanical ones, so we definitely need to look into that. Marcus will also be flying off next week, so I will probably buy a joystick and work on programming with Jason in the meantime.

9th June 2018– Just bought the IKEA chair and realised that Marcus conveniently left out the fact that it is for children. I am hoping that it is able to withstand an adult’s weight plus much MUCH more. Fingers crossed!

10th June 2018– Went to Sim Lim Square today to purchase a joystick for programming. The cheapest I could find was $30 and I am pretty sure there are cheaper ones in the market, so I decided to do more research before purchasing it.

PROGRESS MEETING LINK

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1C2KJajinO2MzE0rG5xS-FQ0rDk8zotSFxMgt-1n8-NI/edit?usp=sharing

Week 5(11th June – 17th June)

11th June 2018– Went to Sim Lim Tower this time to purchase a joystick for programming. Managed to find one for $5, Hooray!!!

12th June 2018– Time for arduino 101!!! We found out that SPMS computer labs are not open during summer break, so we only had only 1 laptop to work with. Basically we spent 4+ hours searching for codes to test out our joystick. Conclusion: the joystick works, but we cannot use it to control the computer for some reason. 🙁

13th June 2018– Found out from Gabriel that arduino libraries may have slight differences for Windows and Mac, which explains our lack of progress yesterday (I am using a Macbook Air), so we decided to use a windows computer in the making and tinkering lab instead. Still no progress, unfortunately :(.

14th June 2018– Jason found out that our lack of progress is due to us using arduino uno instead of arduino leonardo, so he went to Sim Lim to buy that. We also ordered some pro micros online and our VR headset is in Singapore!!!

HOMEWORK OF THE WEEK

• Programming 101

Week 6(18th June – 24th June)

18th June 2018– Found out that our joystick could not fit into the chair mount. We considered buying a smaller one but the one we found already needs soldiering, so a smaller one will be really difficult to find. Major design changes needed. Jason managed to control his home computer with arduino leonardo but for some reason, we can’t get it to work on the school’s computer.

20th June 2018– Second project meeting. We got flamed BIG TIME. The comments and suggestions include

• The course coordinators are not keen on us modifying the chair parts as it may affect the structural integrity of the chair
• Haoyang mentioned that instead of sticking to our pure mechanical methods, we should consider tilt sensors instead
• Thai Wey mentioned that accelerometers are much more suitable for our project than joysticks/ other methods
• Kum Yin said that attaching sensors to our body is much better
• Someone mentioned that we should bolt the chair to the ground to ensure that the chair does not fall over

Looks like there’s a lot to be addressed. We also tested out the VR headset we bought. The computer crashed a couple of times but otherwise, it worked perfectly!

22nd June 2018– Marcus is back!!! We are a full group again! We are currently exploring tilt sensors for our new prototype. It turns out that the IKEA Snille chair had some slight design changes, thus the chair we bought has less space in the chair mount and no hole in the chair frame, causing our space dilemma 🙁 .  As for the comments and suggestions from the second meeting,

• This is unavoidable for our project. It is very difficult to find a chair that already tilts and suits our needs.
• We are working on the tilt sensors 🙂
• Accelerators cannot be used as it measures acceleration. Thus, we may not move in VR when we are constantly tilted in one direction i.e ‘not moving’ in real life
• Attaching sensors to our body is very difficult to do and not practical at all
• We do not want to do this as our goal is to make a device for home use and for the device to be portable. However, we will be placing lead in our hollow chair base to lower the center of gravity of our chair, thus making it less likely to tilt over

23rd June 2018– Stainless steel pipes delayed as the shops are closed. Jason went to fishing shops for lead but they are far too expensive, so we are filling the chair base with sand instead.

HOMEWORK OF THE WEEK

• To do research on various alternatives in regards to our joystick

PROGRESS MEETING LINK

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16neQq4ZRZYqyHcDOJNb80u9sGPrlWpjd14IfZ7OxpFQ/edit?usp=sharing

Week 7 (25th June – 1st July)

25th June 2018– Stainless steel pipe purchased. However, as I wanted one ASAP, I searched for an already made pipe which suited our needs instead of custom making one. The pipe I found is not the best pipe and slight design changes will be needed, but it is the best decision given our limited time (We only have a few weeks left and we still do not have a working prototype :'( ) Jason is doing reservist this week so we are back to being a 2 person team.

26th June 2018– We went to the lab with all our materials and filled the chair base with sand. It only increased the weight by 3kg+ but it is better than nothing. We may consider sticking lead pieces onto the chair base in the future. And HUGE SHOCK. The joystick actually fits! So basically, before today, our joysticks have not arrived in Singapore so what I did was to use the manufacturer’s dimensions and cut a piece of paper of that size. However, the actual joystick has its corners shaved off so it fits our mount perfectly (it is a tight fit). So we went back to our joystick idea. We needed to seal one of our chair pipes so I went to the mechanical workshop at about 11am to consult Mr Rahman about it. He agreed to do it on the spot but when we went down again at 3pm, another group had occupied his time so we will need to wait until he is done. Hoping that our pipes will get cut soon.

29th June 2018– The group ahead of us had a lot for Mr Rahman to do, so he only got around to cutting our pipes today. We are pretty tilted as the pipes only take maximum of 30 mins to cut it, but we waited for it for 4 days. Couldn’t proceed with other things as well without the pipes. We have built up the chair and it can support our weight without breaking. It tilts far too much and it is very difficult to reach equilibrium, so our next step is to find good methods to restore the chair to equilibrium.

HOMEWORK OF THE WEEK

• To come up with good methods to restore the chair

Week 8 (2nd July – 8th July)

2nd July 2018– Happy birthday Marcus!!! Today is also the day where Jason is flying off to do his 21 day OBS, so we are still a 2 person team. We bought a couple of stuff from art friend including a brass pipe to elongate our joystick, and went back to NTU to modify our chair. We tried using rings made of eraser material to restore our chair. It worked a little but the rings tore due to the grinding involved. We decided that proper O-rings will be a good solution for restoring our chair. Kanesh also recommended us to use springs so we will keep it in our consideration for now.

3rd July 2018– Went to Lavender to purchase some O-rings. We were expecting it to be rather pricy but did not expect it to cost over $60. We did not want the O-rings to cost more than other items in our chair, so we innovated on the spot and purchased rubber sheets instead. We also saw some hose clamps hanging outside the shop so we purchased it thinking that it will be useful for our project. The shop also sold some springs but we decided not to purchase them. We went back to NTU to build our chair and everything looks good for tomorrow’s presentation.

4th July 2018– So this morning, we tried our chair with a game and noticed a huge problem. The base of our chair is not securely fixed, so it is tilting as well, taking some of the strain away from the joystick. As a result, we are unable to get the joystick to tilt enough to engage the game. We were also flamed big time during the presentation with the course coordinators suggesting that accelerometers and sensors are much better solutions. We are still sticking with the joystick idea though.

***So I will be on an exchange trip from 6th July 2018, and I feel that I will be unable to provide an accurate representation of what is happening for the next two weeks, so I’ll be handling over the blog to Marcus, who is the only team member in Singapore while I’m away.

PROGRESS MEETING LINK

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qZxUWyZpDlhoZf3nDq7tY9MpiBA7_AsljEGtLPaE258/edit?usp=sharing

Week 9 (9th July – 15th July)

Hello, Hi, and Greetings. (I’m Marcus) This is where the weekly logs take on a different style. Currently, Julianna and Jason are overseas (all in the spirit of work-life-balance). This week was spent sorting out the base of the chair. (What could POSSIBLY go wrong?)

9th July 2018– Okay so the chair tilts, great. However, the joystick does not engage enough, not so great. I had to think of a method of forcing the joystick to “bend” more. Main focus will be making the joystick bend at a larger and than the chair. If I am able to achieve that, it should be modifiable to the point that I can adjust and tweak the amount if “bend-increase” I desire. I tried a couple methods, mainly around changing the bend-point of the chair. None really worked. I need to find another way.

10th July 2018– An idea came to me while looking at hydraulic and spring suspension systems today. If I could place a spring, or repulsive force (pushing upwards onto the joystick module) at the bottom of the joystick, I can probably exaggerate the movement that the joystick controller makes. Similar to how holding a larger weight above your head will make you more inclined to bend your arm. I will buy several things and try them out.

12th July 2018– So now I have some magnets, paperclips and metal washers. As a first-attempt I decided to use the paperclips and bend them into 2 patterns, a basic spring shape, and a zig-zag spring shape. Needless to say none really worked. (Main rationale for using a paperclip is that they were easy to cut into size and length, making the task of making a customizable spring easy) Onto the magnets.
Essentially the magnets were placed in a tube sealed at one end, with opposing ends facing each other, allowing me to place the metal rod attached to the joystick inside the tube. This creates a force upwards on the joystick module, which causes the force to be exaggerated. In theory this should work. Spend today and tomorrow fabricating (i.e. begging for spare parts) the working component for the joystick. (I am so lucky that SPMS has teflon-spray, going to need that)

13th July 2018– Its Friday, last day of the week, and the chair has to be re-assembled. Good news. IT WORKS. RELIABLY. (You need to lean quite a little bit, however not all the way now) This leaves me with the task of finding ways to make the chair more consistent and more user-friendly.

Week 10 (16th July – 22nd July) (“The base of all my problems”)

16th July 2018– Things are going well, chair was re-assembled, software was reuploaded, and code was altered to be a LITTLE BIT less sensitive. The chair still works. Things were looking rather okay at this point. However the base, the bottom bracket of the chair which mounted to the main pole of the chair, was still wobbly. This affected the top bendy-portion where the joystick was housed. A simple matter I thought. Went ahead and used the Max-Bond which Julianna graciously brought to the table (at the suggestion and the procurement from her father), it was super-thick, which seemed to be able to hold the base. It stated on the package that it was for industrial and home usage. Which I thought was good.

After 2-3 hours of letting it settle, I went over to pick the base up. It FELL OFF. Shouldnt this thing be for “industrial use”? After checking online sources it did note that it usually takes “minimum 24hrs to 48 hrs” to set at full strength, I decided to let it sit overnight after redo-ing the entire process again.

17th July 2018– The bottom seems to be setting, the glue was no longer tacky, and there was a visible thick “skin” appearing on the exposed surface. (Of which, was very hard) I had faith that, given time, this would set to a full, industrial, low-flexibility strength filler. I decided not to touch the bottom bracket of the chair today. I’ll give it till tomorrow to set at full strength.
I set my sights on improving the rubber-holders in the chair, the main problem with the hose-clamps is that they were basically a very rigid hoop. Great for holding pipes and straight-joints to each other, not so much for rubber and “squishy” things. (They kept sliding off given some time) Also managed to obtain some new rubber bits from another group who didnt need it. Spent the day cutting up the new rubber pieces to fit, and swapped over to thick zip-ties. These were very thin hoops, perfectly suiting our purposes of pressure-fitting rubber around and onto metal pipes. I’ll leave them till tomorrow and see if they slip like the hose-clamps. No big deal, this should be fine for the presentation.

18th July 2018– The day of panic. Maximum pure panic. (Update-cum-presentation day)

First problem. First thing in the morning, I decided to pull on the chair base and “test” how strong it was. I fully expected it to adhere, and sure enough, it came right off. (IT CAME RIGHT OFF) Well that puts me in a pickle, there was no longer and possibility of an adhesive, we must now drill into this thing. What should be a 20-minute task at the mechanical workshop became a 2 hour task. I was way behind schedule, VERY behind schedule for the day. At the end of it, the base still moved, although not as much. With the solution being 2 bolts through the x and y axis of the cross section of the poles, and aluminium shims all around between the poles to center and wedge the base tight. (It still moves… This will have to do for now, I have a presentation in an hour)

Second problem. After hastily fitting everything back together in time for the presentation, during my first test. The joystick module broke. It BROKE. It has never broken before in the couple weeks of testing, why on EARTH did it break now? I had no choice but to quickly redo another joystick module and put it in place, hoping that it would not break. (I think it was the uneven repelling force of the magnets and thus it shoves the joystick pole into the joystick module itself, causing a breakage in the material) I won’t be testing this with my body weight before the presentation. I have no choice but to demonstrate the prototype with my hands instead of my body weight, it already works. Now all there is to it is streamlining.

20th July 2018– Today (Friday) and Monday marks the reformation of the group after their travels to foreign soil. Time to update and discuss the next further actions.

Also, the office foot-ring for the chair I ordered has arrived ahead of schedule. I consider that lucky.

PROGRESS MEETING LINK

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15I3Cg8uzFF7t0pRhfFpYupeD0flav7s5jNNJr30M4HM/edit?usp=sharing

PS: Julianna is very tilted that the theme for this presentation was changed but according to Marcus, this is because there were 3 other groups using the same design, thus he changed it at last minute.

Week 11 (23rd July- 29th July)

23rd July 2018– Hi! It’s me again 🙂 I have already gone to the lab last Friday to check on our progress and to do some discussions. Jason has also messaged us on Saturday informing us that he is ready for some action. So, we decided to meet up at Lavender MRT station early in the morning and head to the shop for some rubber and springs. We needed the springs to prevent our joystick module from breaking and some rubber as the foot-ring Marcus purchased is far too big and does not fit our chair. After our lovely shopping trip, we remembered that we needed some epoxy so we headed next door and asked for Callen (recommended by the shop owner). Unfortunately, it is Callen’s day off and the other shop owners are clueless on the epoxies they sell (they sell industrial epoxies so we are clueless as well), so after frantically googling the differences between the various epoxies, we gave up and searched for an ordinary neighbourhood hardware store. It took a fair bit of walking and searching but we managed to find what we wanted. After that, we did some slacking (went to Sim Lim to buy Jason’s laptop) and went back to NTU with our new items. Firstly, I washed the rubbers multiple times as they were SUPER dirty (I washed a total of 4 times per rubber and it was still dirty). I then sawed a slit in the circular rubbers (with Marcus mocking me for my lousy sawing skills) and proceeded to sand the sides of the slit to increase the slit size. After some vicious sanding with Marcus and Jason, nothing much seems to be happening, so Marcus gave up and sawed the rubbers again. Next, Marcus did some vicious sanding while Jason and I worked on using epoxy for the base. I poured the two tubes of epoxy into a plastic bag and squished it around to mix it. The plan was to cut a hole in the plastic bag after it was mixed and to pipe it around the tube. Unfortunately, it wasn’t stated on the package that it was fast drying and none of us were aware, so after taking my own sweet time squishing the epoxies together, it was extremely hot when I passed it to Jason to pipe. We did not have enough time to act so I just squirted all the epoxy into the base and we plunged the stainless steel pipe in. After that, Jason and Marcus did the epoxy on the sides, attached the footring and called it a day.

24th July 2018– Dr Ho informed us in advance that all the claims need to be submitted by Friday 2pm, so Jason and I met J early in the morning to settle all our claims. After that, Marcus and I worked on the springs and the joystick. We realised that we need a spring with a k value in between the two springs we purchased. We also used some cords and rubber to further secure the foot-ring as it was sliding.

Week 12 (30th July- 5th August)

30th July 2018– Time to prepare for submission!!! The blog is mostly done other than this week (obviously), the Prototype page (I have lousy drawing skills so it will take a while) and our learning experiences (we haven’t decided how to write that portion yet). Our slides are mostly done too (other than drawing the prototype again). We have difficulties on what to include for the poster and hopefully, everything will be completed by Friday. Fingers crossed! We also went to ask Tony about the workstation but he could not guarantee that it will reach by August 14, so I got a phone number to call and inquire about our computer tomorrow.

31st July 2018– The game we were planning to use, Space Adrift, failed miserably. There were no instructions when we entered the game and we did not know what we were supposed to do, so Marcus refunded the game on the spot and we settled for Minecraft instead. We finally tested our chair with a VR game and it worked, except that for certain chair rotations, the chair was not as sensitive to certain directions. We assumed that this was due to the joystick not being centred so we pumped a lot of hot glue into the pipe to hold the joystick module in the exact centre. Prof Ho also tried out our chair but he felt very motion sick, so we will probably be inserting some extra rubber pieces to soften the movement. We recorded all the controls for Minecraft and we definitely need to create a boundary for others to play in, seeing how I manage to die multiple times and explode a house that Marcus had built (sorry!). The rubber tube covering the spring also broke so we have lots to do tomorrow. Also, we contacted JK Technologies but according to them, they did not receive our order which is impossible (we already have an order number). The company said that they will check on their side so hopefully, it will be settled ASAP. We have informed Tony that we will need his main computer on August 3rd and he agreed, so we will be using it for our grading this Friday.

1st August 2018– We asked Tony if we could use his computer for testing and he agreed. He carried his main system to the Year 1 lab (there is too much interference in the Making and Tinkering lab) for us to play with. I check with him the status of our workstation but sadly, JK Technologies have not responded yet. We set up the VR and I explored the game settings while Marcus and Jason modified our chair. After a while, I put down the headset to update this blog and when Marcus went back to check on Minecraft, the computer crashed, so right now we are leaving the game switched on and preventing the computer from sleeping to check if it will still crash.

2nd August 2018– Everything was going well until something happened in the late afternoon. All of a sudden, our character kept darting backwards although the chair was tilted in the forward direction. We also conveniently forgot to take a video of how our chair works, so we were panicking and trying to fix it by tomorrow, which was drawing nearer and nearer. After multiple rounds of disassembling our chair, playing with the joystick (works if we rotated it by hand), replacing parts of our chair and even cutting the springs shorter and shorter (I was very mortified by this as we had no time to find another spring, plus our chair worked with the original length), we still could not find the problem. The joystick works when we rotated it by hand, so it certainly was not a circuitry nor a joystick issue. The issues persisted in the front back motion even after swivelling the chair by 90 degrees, so it should be an issue with the top half of the chair. Also, it was not possible mechanically for the joystick to move forward and backwards at the same time. After a long night of experimentation, we finally found the problem. The joystick was broken. How could the joystick be broken when all 3 of us kept playing with it and certified that it is in good condition? I have no idea. Luckily for us, Tony opened up the Making and Tinkering lab in the evening to fix a drone so we had access to the soldiering facilities. By the time we were done fixing the chair, it was nearing 9pm. Was the joystick broken right from the start (and avoided detection due to confirmation bias) or did we spoil it while trying to fix the chair (I tried to jam it to make sure it wasn’t broken)? This was the question etched in our minds tonight.

3rd August 2018– Today is the day of our presentation. While I am unsure of how well we did, I can safely say that we are happy with what we have accomplished given the time frame. We learnt so much as a group and overcame many obstacles that seem so huge. We have also decided to build a second chair and to continue improving our current chair. It also marks the last day I will be updating this page so thank you for reading these 4804 words and I hope you had a great time reading our growth and achievements.

The End 🙂