Criterion A: Inquiring & Analysing - Investigating Tech Fair Ideas

After a lot of research and looking for DIY projects that would be fitting for me and my partner – Almira - to do for the Tech Fair, I have narrowed down the possible options to three different pieces to create:

1) Homemade USB Hub 

As education methods develop, and the young generation becomes more and more dependent on technology, school projects, essays, and booklets become digital – teachers prefer to collect soft copies of resources and worksheets, while students are required to type up their assignments. As an easy way of making all of this data portable, people use USBs (Universal Serial Buses): a gadget that enables you to store files on it and then attach it to a computer for either uploading or transferring of data. Although, there is only so much storage capacity that a USB can hold, and pretty soon people end up with about a million USBs, all holding different files – and so, to solve this problem of being drowned in multiple USBs,  people buy things known as hard disk drives. Hard disk drives have a mass storage capacity, and can hold multiple times the size of files a USB can, meaning that all of the data on four different USBs can be put in the same place – now, this is all great, except for the fact that hard drives are NOT cheap. From personal experience and from seeing a few teachers struggle with this dilemma, I thought up this homemade USB hub as an alternative solution, as a different method of data storage. Instead of buying a hard drive, why not just create one central holder of all the USBs you have, almost like a hub? This project can easily be created using some clay, a craft knife, the USBs you intend to put together and their size measurements. The simple method I created consists of simply cuttig out the USB chip along with its extension out of its case, crafting a new case for it out of clay with grooves carved out in the chip’s size for it to fit into, but to make the case in, say, a pentagonal shape with five different grooves carved out on each side to hold five different USBs – you simply insert the USB chips into the mold, the part that enters the computer facing

outwards and sticking out of the form, and then finish off the shape by sealing in the USBs with a top layer of cllay. You can top off the USB tips with caps made of clay as well, and let the whole thing dry. The advantages to this project include that it is inexpensive, doesn’t require many tools, and you can adapt the design to your needs – it is also customisable, you can paint it to your taste and make it look fun & creative, changing the shape to equip however many differen USBs you have, or to suit the shape of the USB ports in your laptop so you can work on two different USBs at once. It is applicable within our school community, for both students AND teachers. Although, one thing that makes the project less appealing to utilise for the tech fair is that even with the hub being one place to hold all of the USBs in it, itcan cause slight confusion over the question of which USB holds the file that the user needs.   

This design I came up with was inspired by the basic customisable USB case idea on: "10 DIY Projects for Tech Nerds - HowStuffWorks." HowStuffWorks. Web. 24 Jan. 2015. <http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/other-gadgets/diy-projects-tech-nerds.htm#page=7>.

2) Slide-On Camera Macro-Lens for Portable Devices

Many people in the world today are passionate about photography and filmmaking – however, a common problem faced by a normal person who doesn’t actually do it as a career, but instead as a hobby in their everyday lives is that you can’t always carry around a professional camera to produce quality photographs wherever you go, restricting you from taking spontaneous images and capturing moments in your life – in some cases, the high-quality equipment required for an HD photo or video clip is unaffordable. Although, one tjing that majority of the population in the world DOES have on their person constantly is their phone. This slide-on macro-lens is an easily portable, simple, yet super-useful accessory for any of your devices, including phones, tablets, and iPods with a camera. Typically. Your basic iPhone camera is something that takes a while to focus, and most of the time cannot produce extremely high-quality photographs when zoomed-in – however, this macro-lens can be slid on and attached to the top corner of your phone, where the camera is, and it enhances the

image by filtering through the picture on the other side and magnifying the acute details. This accessory can be easily created by molding a low-melting point plastic into the correct shape to suit your device and then rounding the edges of a small square of 12mm lens glass using sandpaper, then inserting it into the bottom half of the mold – after it dries, the lens can be easily slid on and off your phone or tablet’s camera to use. As a personal touch, if I do choose this idea for my project, I would thing of adding an attachable clip to the mold to ensure that the lens is safely secured onto the device. A few of the various advantages to this project include the fact that the lens can be easily cleaned by using household substances like acetone-based nail-polish removers, the accessory is a MUCH cheaper alternative to buying professional photography equipment, and can be made at home with much ease. Although, one disadvantage is that for a low-budget tech fair project, the 12mm glass lens required is not inexpensive and is also hard to find in shops.

This idea was from: "IPhone 4, IPhone 4S Slide-On Macro Lens." Instructables.com. Web. 24 Jan. 2015. <http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-an-iPhone-4-or-4S-slide-on-macro-lens/>.

3) Pinhole Camera & Tripod

Pinhole photography was one of the first-ever invented forms of photography in history. The basic mechanism consists of a light proof box with an opening at one end, and a section of film at the other on the inside – when the shutter is released and light is allowd to flood in via the hole, it reflects colours and shapes of the image outside, and the light imprints an inverted image onto the light-

sensitive film inside the camera, which can then be developed into photographs. Pinhole cameras can be very easily created using some cardboard, glue, scissors, a roll of film, and the template to create the camera – although, it requires immense precision and accuracy to create the folds and correctly attach the different parts of the camera together while assembling the final product. This is a very interesting idea that I had considered as a possible option for the tech fair last year, however did not get the opportunity to do. My partner and I have found the websites for two companies called Corbis Readymech and Hubero Kororo that create the design templates for various models of pinhole cameras, and plan to use a few from there to create our final product if we choose this project idea. To add a personal touch to the camera, I have decided to think up different mechanisms to add to the camera that modify it in a way that makes it more user-friendly and remove a few of the disadvantages of this project off of the list. For example, a disadvantage of pinhole cameras is that the shutters are manual – you yourself have to remove and push back the shutter in correct time when taking a picture to avoid the film being overexposed to the light – in order to make this easier, a possible idea I have as a solution is to add a button mechanism inside the camera while actually making it so that when pressed, the shutter pulls back and when released returns to its original position - different button mechanisms can be designed during the design process of the product. Another modification, or in this case, an accessory to add to the camera would be a tripod – it takes at least 60 seconds for a light image to completely imprint onto the film, therefore if you held the camera by hand for the duration, it’s bound to move and shake the image – a tripod, on the other hand, would enable you to mount the camera and set it in the position you want, stopping the camera from shaking. A few of the main advantages to this project is that a) it is much Much more cost- effective compared to buying an actual camera b) it is applicable within the community, seeing as Dubai is a country with strong sunlight, and light-imprinting cameras would take stronger natural pictures in this environment and c) this model of camera is extremely beneficial to the environment. The materials needed and techology manufacturing to make a digital camera produce a massive amount of greenhouse gases per year, damaging the ozone layer of our Earth, and consequentially causing harm to nature – if pinhole cameras become a more popular trend in the world, they could greatly contribute to preserving the environment, and lead to a greener, eco-friendlier future.

The sites used for inspiration for this idea are:

"Pinhole Camera." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 24 Jan. 2015. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera>.

"Pinhole Photography: 10 Paper Cameras For Photograph Purists • TheCoolist - The Modern Design Lifestyle Magazine." TheCoolist The Modern Design Lifestyle Magazine RSS. 24 Feb. 2010. Web. 24 Jan. 2015. <http://www.thecoolist.com/pinhole-cameras-10-paper-cameras-for-photograph-purists/>.

"Peyote Camera." Corbis Readymech. Web. 24 Jan. 2015. <http://www.corbis.readymech.com/en/camera/?camera=1#main_image>.

"Hubero Kororo | Design [dyzajn!] Dyzajn?" Hubero Kororo | Design [dyzajn!] Dyzajn? Web. 24 Jan. 2015. <http://huberokororo.com/index.php?nabidka=10&stranka=produkt&id=7&jazyk=enhttp://www.sharan-camera.com/std35_camera.html>.

"3 Cheap & Easy DIY Smartphone Tripod Mounts Made & Tested." MakeUseOf. Web. 24 Jan. 2015. <http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-cheap-easy-diy-smartphone-tripod-mounts-made-tested-si-x3/>.

In addition to these three ideas, a few more ideas I considered for the Tech Fair were to make Mason jar speakers to link to your music-playing device (commonly known as ‘audioJar’), and solar-powered USB cable device chargers using household items such as Altoid cans. However, considering the low-budget that my partner and I set for the project, the equipment needed to make them were much too expensive, and could not be found in Dubai, meaning they would have to be ordered online, therefore taking a longer time to arrive.