Final Year Project-Pastaiga Easy Traveller

December 28th 2009, my good friend Ray told me about his recent diagnosis of cancer. I watched with a sense of hopelessness as he went dramatically downhill from there. I met him as often as I could amongst all the demands of my final year of college. Approx 4 weeks before his passing on November 3rd, he texted a good night text and that he missed me and to please go and see him asap. I went to see him one gorgeous friday afternoon. It was one of the nicest days we'd had that year. Just over 20 degrees and a gorgeous indian summer day. I arrived at his sister's and the fact that he insisted on going in his sister's car instead of my own was already a telling sign of how vulnerable he'd become. We arrived at his mother's and to despite her pleas to be careful and that perhaps he shouldn't, he was really keen to go for a walk. So we walked down the country road outside the house for about ten or so minutes. We stopped a little down the lane for a break and he comment how nice it was to have the wind and sun on his face. When we got back to the house, we chatted away for about 2 hours like good friends should (it was the most animated and lively I had seen him in probably a year). Finally he asked if we could call it a day as he was feeling tired. I replied with "of course". I moved over to his seat and held his hand as he looked at me and told me disparagingly how he didn't want to leave his friends and family. I guess he knew? After nearly a year of hoping, he must have known at this point.....I made it outside to my car in one piece and then bawled all the way home. I was in bits. I guess on hindsight I had a fair idea of what lay ahead and so when I got that 8am phonecall from his sister 3 weeks later on the morning of the 3rd of November, all I could do was burst out in tears and whimper some inappropriate words like thank you (if I recall correctly) ie thank you for calling me....I don't really remember. It's all a haze. A young sporty lad in his 30s gone like that :( I told him that last time I met him, how I had eventually chosen to make my final year project one geared towards cancer patients. He described it as noble. Which still strikes me as, for lack of a better word, comical in some sense? Noble?? How on earth could it be noble?? Anyhow, whilst I would never have thought that the end result would be what is effectively a travel case, it is a genuine attempt to answer a variety of needs that came out from much in depth research with cancer patients, their family members, nurses, doctors and other people who contributed their thoughts and feedback to the design of the product. I hope if my friend Ray is looking down from somewhere at this earth, that he might even be slightly proud of the resulting work and I hope someday to take the sheer quantity of valuable insight I uncovered and put it to good use in other products. Ray, this project is dedicated to you my dear friend. I still think fondly of our coffee meetings by O'Briens and that one game of tennis :) Miss you! Knuffels!

Trek Route -4th Year Project -Collaboration with Li Chen

In semester one of Fourth Year we had a group design module in which we were asked to design a product and its digital counterpart. Through research, myself and Li discovered that the biggest issue for cyclists was that they didn't feel safe around motorists so we endeavored to develop something that would allow the cyclists to make motorists aware of their presence. 

The lights are incorporated into the helmet. At the front is a white led and at the back is a red led strip. At the sides are amber lights. The helmet also contains 3 ultrasound sensors (same technology as parking sensors in cars). These detect cars that are approaching the cyclist. There are 2 invisible "barriers" or "perimeters around the cyclist. When a car is outside either of these perimeters, the helmet does not react. Note that there are 3 settings -totally off so that the helmet does not trigger when not in use, lights off but sensors on for daytime use and lights on and sensors on for use in the dark.  

The outer perimeter which is displayed in green (in the 2nd board below), is the first perimeter, which, if breached will cause the lights to start flickering and to shine at a greater intensity than normal. This is supposed to warn motorists to back off and give the cyclist space. If the second barrier is breached then the lights reach their maximum intensity in both brightness and frequency of flashing. If a cyclist is cycling down a busy road and has to cycle close to the cars, then at least the high intensity flashing will alert motorists to the cyclist's presence. 

All the information of how often the green and red barriers are broken is fed back to an iPhone app which records the data, along with the data of all other cyclists to form a map of most dangerous routes (ie routes in which the red perimeter is broken most often), the busiest routes (ie routes in which either perimeter was broken, greatest number of times) and the quietest routes (ie the routes in which either perimeter was broken the least amount of times). 

Notes Iphone App image obtained from: http://www.mobiletracker.net/archives/2007/01/09/apple-iphone

3D Printer for end products even tools?

When I did my internship at Futura Design and finally had a chance to properly witness the benefits of 3D printing machines, I remember being fascinated at how they were able to print separate components even as intricate as customised screws of sorts and was left wondering why, if it's possible to print things to such a level of detail and functionality, why we can't use 3D printing machines to print the end product rather than just a prototype. I came to the conclusion that obviously the material used to print 3d objects isn't strong enough to warrant it being used as an end product. Turns out however, such machines actually exist, just think what the impact of this could be!

http://wimp.com/functionaltools/