Midterm: Time Capsule

I would like to start off by saying, the midterm overall was both challenging and extremely enjoyable. I love working on physicals projects as much as digital ones, and this one in particular was very close to me and held a lot of meaning. There were of course many changes between the initial and the final rendition of my time capsule. I also had to remove certain items, and replace them to convey I think, a better more fluid story. 

The story of my time capsule is about my love for video games and my journey to where I am now. My final items were a Raspberry Pi (as well as a micro usb), a League of Legends World Finals pin, a Persona 5 acrylic stand, a deck of Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and an SNES controller (not the original). These items portray my love for video games at different points in my life, and how they influenced me to pursue game design and development as a career. 

I also love objects that have more than one function, so I designed my time capsule to look and function like a Nintendo Gamecube. I wanted the entire time capsule to be functional, so I created a mounting area for the Raspberry Pi and made sure to expose its ports. This would allow whoever finds it in the future to hook up my time capsule and play it. 

The Start:

I cut up cardboard pieces from leftover boxes and created the Gamecube shape as accurately as possible. I created a hinge with cardboard and left the hole on the bottom right side of the lid. This is because on the original Gamecube, the button is that position is the Eject button, which causes the disc tray to pop open upwards and i wanted to keep a similar affordance.

The next thing I did was create a mount for the Raspberry Pi. This was a little difficult to do because I had to both hold the Raspberry Pi up in the perfect position on the inside, while also trying to mark the location from the outside accurately. After it was marked, I cut out an opening on the outside and the side. I also had to make the opening bigger on the front because of how the ports on the Raspberry pi are situated. Because of this, I also decided to cover up the initial controller ports to avoid confusing the user with empty ports that served no purpose. The next thing I designed was the "memory card". The Raspberry Pi functioned off of the USB, and I wanted a way have the USB separated and have the user insert it. Since the original Gamecube had memory sticks, I tried to create one for the USB. I then cut another opening on the side for the power source and HDMI cables.

The next part was for aesthetics and accuracy. I cut five pieces of cardboard in a curve to create the handle on the back. Because the Gamecube had slots for two memory cards, I decide to create another to place the League of Legends World Finals pin in. Because I wanted this one to be openable, I used a little bit of Velcro to create a flap. Again I would have to create a large opening in the front for this second memory card to go in.

After the memory cards were created, I worked on  created an area for the deck of cards as well as supporting the memory card from the inside. The memory card tended to fall in because it was empty inside. To solve this I placed the deck of cards inside and drew out an area. Then I hot glued the walls for the area as well as creating a small box to place under the memory card on the inside. After creating the box, I also noticed that there were small areas where the other memory card could be placed. So I created two extra walls to serve has an area to hold the USB memory card in place.

At this point I realized that all the contents in the box was securely placed in there. (I actually tested this by swinging the entire box around with the contents inside :D) Becuase of this, I wanted to keep it this way and deck of cards would easily fly everywhere. So I created another slit on the side where an cover could be pulled out. This would create another "box" for the cards and it worked exactly like I wanted it to.

I did a final test with everything inside, and the Raspberry Pi still works!

Discovery Storyboard