Gus’ brief

The musical bike is a stationary tandem bike that, when pedaled, makes music.  As the back wheel of the bike turns a cylinder with spikes, the spikes hit a piano-style hammer that hits drums. It can be played in an ascending or descending scale or have songs programmed in like on a music box.  This bike will be a part of a playground created for children who have fled Syria and are now living on the Turkish border. The bike was created as one of many musical elements of the playground. Play and music are important for children everywhere, but many of these kids don't have much of either.  

This project builds on the mechanics of a piano. With the piano, a finger hits the key, the key moves the hammer, and the hammer hits the string to make a sound. In our innovative mechanism, a foot moves the pedals, which moves the wheel. The wheel moves a cylinder, which strikes the keys that hit the drums to make musical notes.

There are many benefits to this bike: Since this is a musical bike, we hope it motivates kids to pedal.  By pedaling faster or slower, kids can change the tempo of the music, which is fun. The bike gives kids good exercise. Because it’s tandem it is a social experience as well. We hope that our design helps kids meet new friends on the playground and just makes kids happy. 

Harpvard Bridge hacks the space on Harvard Bridge, the bridge joining Back Bay and Cambridge. It takes advantage of the number of people who walk across the bridge between Boston and Cambridge while trailing their fingers along the railing by converting a segment of the rail into a digital harp. The harp has six strings, but it can support many more if one were to make a large public instillation of this project. The strings are standard guitar/harp strings and they produce the same sound as a guitar does. Each pair of strings is also fitted with a distance sensor, and they feed all their data back into a locked box holding an Arduino microprocessor board and speaker system. While the traditional strings are twanged, the speaker plays a complementary sound. Each pair of strings has a different sound. The hack turns trailing one's fingers along the rail into a fun, musical experience.

Urban Hacks was the idea of hacking the urban environment in a way that would affect everyone that interacts with the environment. After coming up with a bunch of ideas, we decided on making a hammock. We wanted people who walk by on the street to be able to sit down and relax or even take a nap at any time given in a more comfy option than a bench.

Our first brainstorm included all the ideas we originally wanted to put in our hammock. A lot of those extra ideas were cut as the project progressed but some were added. In the sketch, we wanted to add speakers on either side of the persons head. We also wanted to put a cupholder on one of the poles that the hammock would be connected to. Before we made a lifesized model and worried about putting those extras in, we made a smaller scaled model so we could be more comfortable with our concept and see if we wanted to change anything before we got into the lifesized model.

We used a little piece of fabric, laser cut some thin wood and used rope to get our first model up. It was onto the next model from there. The idea had seen a major change though. Instead of being hung on two poles, this hammock would be hung on one pole and be more like a seat. With that design change we decided to take out both the speakers and the cupholders because it seemed like those would just go to waste and add extra complication.

We got cracking on the first lifesized model of ours. We put in a support beam that would be above the hammock and would help connect both sides of the hammock together and have it hang from the pole. There wasn't much to the model originally so we had the idea of making it light up! With the support beam added it would be a good place to put an LED strip on. It makes the hammock seem more intriguing and more interactive. I spent a lot of time working with Arduino and the LED strips. At first, I just tried to get a very small bulb to light up which I was able to figure out. We thought it was too simple for the LED to be on all the time and that would drain the battery quickly so we wanted the LED lights to turn on once someone sat on the hammock. To make that possible I started working with the flex sensor as I still continued to figure out coding in Arduino. I continued to work with the small bulb light and it wasn't until later that I used the LED strip. Since they were both sources of light, it didn't matter much which I used, and the bulb took up less space and just made the process feel cleaner. Only difference would be the code for the lights. I already had a code ready for the LED strips where I would just have to edit it and put the specific amount of lights on the strip which was 25. Now, with everything working with Arduino, if the sensor received any flex, it would activate the LED strip. It was now time to put it in/on the hammock itself. We didn't put in the sensor until we worked on our final hammock.

After testing our first lifesized model, we thought it was good but we should make it a bit bigger and possible more comfortable. With the rope being yellow, we decided to paint all of the hammock yellow so it would look better. Our new fabric was already yellow so it was just a matter of painting the support beam. We also made a pocket in our fabric that we could place the Arduino board along with the battery in, which we needed for the lights to work. Lastly, we decided to update the look due to a small accident. We had a sit stencil we designed and we spraypainted onto the final model. While spraypainting, a breeze came through and spread the paint randomly, so we decided to do that all over the fabric which came out really well.

Over the past two weeks, Pablo and I have worked on an extendable table. The table may look fairly normal at first sight, but there are handles to be pulled out and extended. The main problem I've encountered when eating lunch is a place to put my food. I usually sit on the couch, along with 10+ other kids. It is very challenged to put all that food on two small tables. I often just eat on my lap. But, with an extendable table, the students and I will no longer encounter this problem. Our solutions with to created a yin yang design in between two top and bottom layers. The yin yang design has handles attached to them, where you can pull them out for extra space. There are three extensions in all, adding much more room for students lunches

      Our tidal wave bench is inspired by many values of a Montessori classroom including but not limited to: organic/naturalness, multi-­functionality, beauty, educational intent, and exploration. This bench is ideal for many uses such as sitting on, crawling under, and sliding down. We hope that this piece will aid in a child's growth as she or he decides how to use the piece. Classrooms consisting of varying ages could find this piece functional: younger children would seek amusement from the tunnel and sliding aspects, while older kids might find more use in the singular seat on one side for concentrated work, or on the bench on the other side to engage with friends. In any classroom, this large piece will define the space, without being overbearing, as it is constructed out of natural and beautiful wood, and would blend with the vibe of the room. It is our hope that this multi­-purpose piece is perfect a Montessori class. 

The Aqua Wagon was created in order to provide people in Central Square with a mobile method of growing and harvesting diverse plants and herbs. The Aqua Wagon can be transported away from shady sections of Boston to areas with higher sunlight to increase the speed and efficiency of plant growth. The produce is grown relying on an aquaponics system, which uses organisms like fish and shrimp to transfer energy to the plants. In turn, the plants are grown through a continuous cycle of water and nutrients, resulting in the plants growing at a fast and consistent rate.

Although there are many food carts stationed in Cambridge, the Aqua Wagon's function and design separates it from the rest. The cart rolls on two wheels and moves by pushing a wagon-like handlebar in the front. Above the fish tank that occupies the center of the cart, the plants rest on a Lazy Susan mechanism. Tubes connected to the tank transfer water to the Lazy Susan to provide water to the plants; the water then drips down back into the tank to maintain a continuous cycle. By demonstrating the reuse of finite resources in food production, our project stands out as an environmentally friendly product. 

A device that lets two people support the body weight of someone who is disabled and unable to support themself, allowing him or her to dance freely and return to a sport they love.

Our project is a device made to help a women named Marina, who suffered a traumatic brain injury that resulted in a partial loss of motion on the left side of her body and the inability to dance. Dance brings a story to life, animates a feeling, and spreads cultural awareness, but most importantly it's an expression of creativity and self. Dance brings beauty to the world and everyone in it. The device we developed will allow Marina to return to the art of dance, an activity that she loves, with her siblings who will be there to support her physically and emotionally. Our project addresses the post injury issues of exercise and physical interaction. By helping her to dance, Marina will be able to spend time with her siblings doing something they all love. In order to make this device we used PVC pipe for the two poles that makeup the frame and between them is a metal "Lazy Susan" with a harness in the middle. This allows Marina to spin around without needing to worry about holding onto something or falling. The pieces that attach the "Lazy Susan" to the pipes were 3D printed as were the pieces that stop the "Lazy Susan" from sliding to far up and down the poles. Additionally, caps on the ends of the poles which hold strapping that attaches to the support harnesses is also 3D printed.