Import Soul Wouldn’t it be nice if things just worked

13Feb/110

Donation box prototypes

I have begun to plan and design some aspects of the marble run window of my interactive donation box. There are two main aspects i have been focusing on so far are, ways to lift the marbles back to the starting point and different track elements for on the way down. For both of these i have begun the construction of cardboard prototypes.

Marble lift

There are a few different methods that are used to lift marbles, the main ones being screw based or disk based, i have decided that it would be much easier to go with the disk design as it would be much easier to manufacture out of predominantly wood

This video shows my prototype, the final version will have 5 of the wheels and gears to keep the wheels in sync

Track Elements

For my cardboard prototypes it is very difficult to produce any shape with much of a curve, so i have focused on the moving elements of the track. These designs are based off many other marble runs on youtube. This setup is designed to be the elements that will fill one side of the display. In the final version there will be more simple and decorative elements such as spirals and twists to connect the moving elements.

I will hopefully have some more videos of prototypes up in the next few weeks as i work on them.

13Feb/110

Interactive donation box

Besides doing a major project for software design and development, i am also working on a major project for design and technology. For this project i have started designing an interactive donation box.

The main idea is that when a coin is put in it is sorted according to its denomination, depending on the value of the coin a given number of marbles will be sent through a marble run. The front of the cabinet will also feature an area to promote what you are trying to attract donations for as well as a display showing how far they are to reaching their fund raising goal.