Little Box

Little Box is an interactive installation conceived by Marie Sester. It senses the environment around it and responds with lights, sound and movement. I worked on it with two other creative technologists and artists, Emily Webster and Genevieve Hoffman. We took the concept from sketches and designed and built the piece. A few notes from our process:

The tray

The tray needs to sit flush with the top of the box and still let the actuators pass through to lift the lid. We cut clear square acrylic rod to the height of the box minus the thickness of the Corian, and put a riser in each corner. The tray rests on them, flush with the outside of the box.

The LEDs

The LED strip can be cut every three LEDs, but the soldering pads are very sensitive and can be ruined by too much heat, by de-soldering, or by a bad cut. So we soldered header pins onto PCB board instead. The lights were easy to wire, removable, and secure, and the iron spent much less time on the strip.

The actuators

The actuators needed a cage that held them without vibration and still let us pull them out if one broke. We made a housing around the actuators, partly fixed to the back of the box.

First prototype built by Mustafa Bagdatli, Genevieve Hoffman and Emily Webster.