I have a bad habit of starting projects and seeing them halfway through and not completely ending them, but I'll share 2 that I've gotten pretty far on and that help exemplify my maker philosophy.
Starlord Mask
So first thing is first, I did not create the 3D files that were used in this mask. The main point behind me sharing this piece is that even though I didn't create the base files, I still had to clean them up, attach them together, paint, and figure out how to make it attachable and detachable. A pitfall I see sometimes in making is that a huge hurdle people face is being afraid because what they want to make isn't completely original, however this mask means a lot more to me because I spent the time putting it together and painting it up and making sure it fit right. (and it's still not even 100% done) So even if it's not 100% original, I've taken control of the process in how the product is put together.
Music Player
Now here's the project that started more or less from scratch. It started out by being at a toy store and being upset that music boxes are stuck to one song and one song only. So I wanted to make a music box that could easily play whatever set of tones I wanted. I had been messing around with arduinos so I figured I'd give it a shot and settled upon converting a color into a tone.
My initial idea was to have a color set to each tone (12 tones total) and a roller would roll a strip of paper through the viewer. The strip could be colored with any marker or whatever and it would play each tone as it passed. As is the case with most ideas, this had to be scaled down in order to be more manageable. A huge limiting factor is the photo-diodes that determine the color. They return RGB values and they aren't the most accurate and can vary wildly depending on factors such as what was used to make the color and even how far away the sensor is. Because of this, I designed a casing in auto cad that would keep the sensor at a fixed distance, and I painted the inside of the casing black in order to further limit changes to the color as it passed through the sensor.
With the physical aspects of my device where I'd like it, the coding aspect was the next hurdle. The first issue was determining 12 different colors that could be used for each of the tones. This proved to be too difficult since many of the colors were far to similar for the sensor to reliably distinguish between them. Initially, all I had to work on for the code was the information available on the web about the sensor. My initial code was based heavily on this and had a very difficult time distinguishing between similar colors. I asked a long time friend of mine, Evelynn, to help me since she has a very strong coding background and has always had a fondness of anything musical. One of her friends graciously allowed us to use their company's space to work. We settled on sticking to a single key, so 8 different tones plus a "no-tone" in order to further simplify what the sensor had to do. Once the code is calibrated to a set of colors, it normalizes the RGB values and looks for the lowest value to play. In our case, the lowest value (white) gives no tone. once it settles on a value, a corresponding tone is played.
The casing was 3D printed and designed in a CAD program, however I learned that it's not really practical to make something so permanent early on. I'm not particularly pleased with the size of the casing. While working, we realized that the sensor's width of view was too large, which caused trouble for the sensor sticking to one color. I had to remedy this by inserting a couple of pieces of cardboard to act as blinders. Going forward, I'm going to prototype the casing out of cardboard until I'm happy enough with how all the pieces fit together to print out something more permanent.
My current product is far from my original, granted it's not 100% finished, however getting those notes to play out when the color changed was super exciting after the difficulties coding. As an extra bonus, I was even able to reconnect with an old friend when I had asked for some coding help. Surprisingly, this project was similar to one that she is currently working on, and now we're helping each other out completing our respective projects!
Looking back on both of these projects, neither was one that I could have done alone. Both could probably have been ordered and/or have been done before. Regardless, these two things are uniquely my own. I was in control of the process by which they were made. Being ingrained into the process makes these two things personal to me. Even if they don't function exactly how I intended they're still mine. This is how I think making should be felt by those taking part in the creative process. Regardless of the functionality the product is special and unique.