Progress Update:
Bad news at the start: The motor fits the 3D model, however, the motor has some internal problems. It is a Brushless DC electric motor, hence it cannot hold something vertically, though the fragment is really light in weight. I have to buy another motor and re-do all the modeling, 3D printing process
I immediately found another motor and this one is not a brushless motor, after a simple test it can lift the fragment up and down, so I began to 3D model the winch system for this motor.
3D printing in progress
This time, everything worked really well, as the video shows, the winch system rotates really well. We used a phone to test its reliability and succeeded. The only problem is we need a bigger 3d model in general so that we can stable the whole winch structure. So I remodeled again and ready to be printed next Tuesday.
On the interactivity side. I have good news that Ziye recommended me a type of sensor - the Fresnel lens - that detects human infrared signals. So, my first iteration is using a webcam or Kinect to detect people approaching as an interactive medium. However, using these two detectors means I need to put them somewhere on the ground, causing accessibility issues like block path. Using a fresnel lens means I can hang the detector up high on the ceiling along with the winch system, hiding it just like an eye helping audiences below to overlook their dream fragments.
We connected the winch system and the motor with a Fresnel Lens. When it not detecting people, the winch rotating speed would be 5 and when people are detected, the winch rotating speed would accelerated to 15. The logic is really simple, but sufficient enough for this midterm demo. The code are shown above. The test video is shown below