Weather Tile-Progress

Quick Project Overview

This project is a piece of wall art in the Mediterranean design style. The object is both a tech product and art piece that displays weather data visually via colors on a strip of smart LEDs. The intention is to place the LED strip within the recession of a deep picture frame and to fill the inside of the frame with colored paper rolled into a floral design that mimics Mediterranean tile.

Supplies

Electrical

For this project we were challenged to source our products second-hand as much as possible. Thankfully as an EE student I already had many of the necessary electrical components needed for the construction of such a device. This includes jumper wires, a USB cable to be stripped, and a wifi enabled microcontroller with several broken digital pins that we ditched during my senior design project. Finally the primary component: smart LEDs had initially been purchased for the Wearable Technology class. I was making a light up slap bracelet and purchased these smart LEDs because their rubber casing makes them waterproof, however I found that the rubber casing leaves a rough edge when cut and limits your ability to arrange the individual LEDs and I only needed a short section for my design so I ditched them. However, in this use case I needed a long line of LEDs with only a small curvature across a frame making this strip perfect. I am hoping to create as little E-waste as possible, however I did want to incorporate electronics into this project as it is a celebration of competing my EE degree, a great way to get rid of some old components, and it reflects my personality which is an important aspect of the Mediterranean design aesthetic. The code for this project was really easy, most of the program came directly from Instructible page I’m referencing (https://www.instructables.com/Weather-Chameleon-20-Changes-Color-With-the-Weathe/). In addition OpenWeather.org was an invaluable resource given their free to use, open source, weather data API.

Art Supplies

I got a milky white acrylic sheet from Amazon to allow light to pass through the back of the design and I’ll need to laser cut it to fit the frame. I also need a picture frame.

For the art supplies of this project the most repeated item I needed was paper. In order to give a second life to my drawer full of papers (see below), I decided I would incorporate them as the central focus of the wall art.

I know I want to color these so that the design can be bright like these tiles (see below). I also found a pair of quilling paper earrings on Etsy that remind me of Mediterranean tile.

Credit: Quillaria on Etsy

Credit: AuthenticTiles on Etsy

First Attempts

I wanted to get started right away, I went to the BTU and sliced paper using an Xacto blade and a straight edge and it looked really jagged. The height was also super uneven. This does not comply with my aesthetic, so I’m going to need to invest $15 or so in a paper slicer or borrow one from campus. I didn’t color the paper for this iteration because I’m just playing around with shapes, but I hot glued it to a bit of origami paper for some pizzaz.

I like the center of this flower, I feel like the loops kind of look like a lily flower. I might also want to try to find some quilling tools so that my spirals are all equally tight/loose. In terms of my schedule I need to laser-cut my acrylic sheet, so I’ll try to do that in the coming week. Besides that I need to make an Art Parts trip in the next two weeks for markers, a frame, and maybe a paper cutter. Looking forward to more progress in the future.