Building Development

This is the made up wooden stand and rod to support the mood rings. Unfortunately due to the mood ring idea being my plan B, I left getting the mood rings till quite late. For some reason there is a serious lack of mood rings in the Wellington region, so i was only able to get my hands on 5 mood rings. Also these are all different sized mood rings so i had to taper the rod in order to allow this. My overall design encourages the user to use their right hand so in the rod design i made the right side slight thinner to make it easier and more comfortable for the user. For the rod colour i had to decide on a neutral colour. After playing around with the mood rings, i found the colours they gave off were not that bright and in some cases very dark. So i chose white as my colour for the rod. That way any dark colours given off by the mood rings wont be lost by the white background.

Building Development

This is the development of the boxes i made up for the cold blocks and the head pad. I used pine wood and wood screws to make the box. I then painted each box with it's respected colour. I then got my print outs of the hand prints and laminated those. I then placed them on the top of the box, sticking them down with double sided sticky tap. I wanted these boxes to be the same size to keep the overall object tidy and symmetrical. I have kept the under side of the boxes open so that i can place the heat pad and cold blocks in them. I will then put some tea towels underneath to raise the heat pad and the cold blocks to lightly rest on the laminated print out to allow maximum temperature transfer.

Building Development

A custom bit of wood i got and cut. Using masking tape to get a nice finish. Used two basic colours of red and blue paint to show the cold side and the hot side.

Building Development

I have decided to use cold blocks instead of a block of steel as my cold pad. These will be much colder and therefore get a better reaction from touching the mood rings.

Building Development

This is another type of heat pad that i got hold of. This pad has the ability to reach a surface temperature of 54 degrees by having a small metal disc flex inside the pad causing a molecular reaction where the sodium acetate solution inside is caused to crystallize and give off heat. This would work very well as by desired heat pad but i will have to build a rather large box to fit it.

Building Development

These are some random heat pads that my dad found in his closet. Once you open the sealed packet, the pad automatically starts to heat up in 30mins. It then lasts for 12 hours. As you can see I experimented with one first and found that it didn't get hot enough for my liking.

Bad news

Unfortunately the touch sensitive glass has not arrived yet so I am forced to go with my original idea of using the mood rings. This is disappointing as I believed my project would have worked much better and be way more visually appealing.