Serving Guests with a Planetary Poise.
The Lunar Turntable.
The Lunar Turntable is a serving tray that serves its guests and allows guests to interact with it playfully. The dome in the middle imitates the moon in its elliptical stages and as the turntable disc is rotated, the moon waxes and wanes.
The purpose of this device was to allow our peckish users to interact with the kitchen in a non-invasive, playful manner.
This project was coded in Python and used two Micro:bit processors.
Preface.
The goal of this project was to create a ludic device that would interact with a user’s daily life at home. Being ludic entails it showing spontaneous discovery and undirected playfulness, similar to toys like LEGO™. As the COVID19 pandemic hit the world globally, self-isolative lifestyles became the new normal, with work and home life blending into one environment.
The kitchen has particularly crucial role in the household, with its role evolving during the pandemic. Pantries indicate the need of a frugal, well prepared, lifestyle whilst expanded seating options muster gatherings encouraging social interaction. Participants of households spend more time together and the kitchen becomes a spot for convening, eating and social interactions.
Thus, I wanted to create a ludic device centred around encouraging social engagement around, not inside, the kitchen, a challenge that forced me to think differently about how people interact with the kitchen.
First Impressions.
First impressions for this device started out various designs of a serving platter. I knew I wanted to do something related to snack organisation and distribution as it was an activity that garnered social interaction.
Initially I wanted to create a serving dish which mimicked a small oasis, where users could metaphorically “rest“ at this plate while different nature soundscapes played over a small speaker. Motion sensors would detect hands from different directions and would play different animal sounds/calls, associated with that habitat. I was hoping that this would be enough features to capture the spontaneous and playful nature of ludic play.
However, this idea was not feasible, as the microprocessor that I was working with had 16KB of RAM and could barely store a nature soundscape.
Conception.
Instead of focusing on what I could achieve, I started to explore the capability of the micro:bit and its features. After many sketches, an idea for turntables likening themselves like planetary orbits presented itself to me as interesting device.
What if serving turntables like the lazy susan functioned like a planetary orbit, and displayed a position of a planet or so?
Ideations for the lunar turntable begun, and I wanted to create a device that would teach users about the moon phases, as they spun the turntable. Another processor was purchased and acted as a receiver via radio, to pick up gyroscopic motion and display that data in its pixel interface.
An interaction model was written up and a proof of concept was shortly created after.
The Lunar Turntable’s first prototype’s proof of concept. It was simple enough to give the impression of a turntable, and was functional to show off the potential of the Micro:Bit Processor.
The Enclosure.
With the proof of concept working perfectly, housing for the electronics and a large scale model needed to be designed.
I modelled and printed the enclosure, dividing the turntable into 5 sectors, modelling a jigsaw tail end for assembly. To ensure smooth movement of the tray, rollers were modelled with one roller placed in each section.
The middle light tower had 3 partitions created to separate the LED strip and show the different phases of the moon.
All pieces were printed with PLA plastic and the tray was cut from MDF board.
