Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0lS0mmjvCWPc0l5LU01QUxKc1E/view?usp=sharing
Description:
To me, Dandelion is a symbol for departure, whether it is the children leaving home to pursue their dream, or people coming out of their comfort zone. I left my home in China when I was 13 and came to the United States alone for high school and now college. One time, when I was back home, my mother said to me: “It’s strange but I feel like you have never left home.” This seems like to me is her wish–her daughter is home more often–being reflected and tweaking her perception of reality. I decided to capture that wish in my project. In this project, my dandelion doesn’t become bare after a user blows at it; it only spins faster in the opposite direction, a symbol of my mother’s conflicting emotion.
In developing this project, I ran into a lot of unforeseen difficulties.
1. Motor speed/wrong type of motor. I had to experiment with different motors to get enough torque to spin my dandelion. Some of the motors were not working with my current circuit setup.
2. Wind sensor. I accidentally broke off the little chip on the wind sensor and it was too tiny to solder it back. I got a new one but the new parts are not soldered.
If I had more time, I would set up 2 wind sensors to detect the direction of wind, which determines the direction of the spinning of dandelion. Also, I would make the dandelion “wings” expand and contract more drastically.