MIND'S EYE - A Digital Camera Made to be Modified
A project about adaptable digital electronics.Ceres Miller, 2023
Mind's Eye is a digital camera designed to be modified by an end user. Contemporary digital electronics require expensive tools and difficult to acquire knowledge to alter them, dissuading an end user from learning and developing skills to make their electronics their own.
This project is my research and investigation into how adaptable digital electronics might look and work, that enable end users to explore, alter and adapt their devices.
From my development, I considered there to be 3 key components to adaptable design for digital electronics:
- A craft approach to making, where materials and construction of a product are craft-based.
- A design that creates intrigue, encouraging a user to explore it physically.
- Avenues for social and community cooperation, providing a way to learn and ask questions, share resources, and motivate the user.
The product includes the camera kit itself, but also to support an end user's ability to make using the camera, it includes warranty, an online forums service bringing users of the camera together to ask questions, share information, and exhibit their work, an online documentation service curating a library of information and resources, and paper instructions detailing assembly and asking the user to get involved in the community online by talking about their work and posting pictures.
Users talking about and exhibiting their work online is how new users come into the project. It provides inspiration and motivation to users, puts them in contact with experienced people, and helps a new user develop their own methods and goals for making.
The design of the services was inspired by band posters, using bright colours and patterns to feel energetic and creative. The impression they are meant to give is that the camera is not just a tool for experienced makers, but for everybody, with variable skillsets, methods, preferences, and materials.
With this camera my aim was to demonstrate ideas I had about modifiable digital electronics, and to look into the entire process that someone goes through when trying to learn about and repurpose their electronic devices. What methods would they use, how would they stay motivated, where would they get the knowlege and skills to do it.
Mind's Eye is a camera that inspires creativity and makes a user want to change it. I think it is a good starting point for further work in adaptable, open design for digital electronics.
Models, drawings and code available on Github.
3D Assembly
Left click to rotate, mousewheel to zoom.Development work
Experimenting with creating intrigue in electronics by rebuilding webcams in freestanding wire.
Models of logic gates in embroidery and brass wire. These were used to explore how people interact with electronic concepts made tactile.
Brass wire earphones. Combining the structure of the earphones with the electronics as much as possible using brass wire makes them quick to make with a soldering iron, customisable, and repeatedly alterable.
A making together workshop, exploring quick prototyping materials for making electronics from scratch, like conductive paint, copper sticky tape, and foamboard.
An artistic representation of my project, when I was considering the potential of brass wire as a building system for digital electronics. LEDs in the bridge would light up in sequence as wheels passed over them.
Electronic trinkets, made to explore social narratives that could influence a user's making. These are objects made seperately by long distance lovers, to be put together when they meet. Their collaborative thinking and the design process they go through together is shown in a mockup chat screenshot.
First prototype of the Mind's Eye camera, with a soldered brass wire mounting rail on top. For my prototypes after this, I wanted to make the shape more intresting, but I couldn't keep the mounting rail because using a soldering iron couldn't get the brass plate hot enough to solder to it well and braizing with a torch is probably not something a hobby user would have access to. Drilling holes or screwing it down would have been such intricate work that a user might not want to change it.
