How to make a gift for 2000km or use the undocumented features of the Internet
Agree, and in ordinary circumstances it is far from easy to choose and present a really good gift. And in some cases, additional difficulties are added to the problems of choice, search, acquisition and presentation from the right angle.
The girl’s birthday was approaching (I begin to suspect some kind of temporary pattern of this phenomenon), I wanted to make a welcome and slightly unexpected gift.
Feeling the soil a couple of months before the event gave enough information and a good candidate for this role. They became a watch of a rather curious startup Brathwait.
There was only one question, how to present a gift.
An order was placed on the company’s website, and the first phase of waiting came, which, among other things, did not last long. In addition to the slight delay associated with the lack of the required color strap (as in the photo above), delivery was carried out in 12 days.
It is worth noting that the live watch turned out to be as good as in the promotional photo. Packaging is consistent.
While the clock was running, an interesting detail was found out, from 23 to 29 the girl had to go to St. Petersburg on business, i.e. and on her birthday on the 27th, she will be there. A good gift given on time is good, so it was decided to conduct an online presentation, and to give it alive upon arrival. The idea gradually acquired meaningful outlines.
Initially, I wanted to make a link to a video clip on youtube, hand it in an envelope, and open access at 00:00 on 09/27. But there was a week left before departure, and I obviously did not have time to do everything I had planned. The idea of creating a landing page on a free platform slipped by, but from a superficial study it became clear that the page itself, with the necessary functionality, should be sketched faster. The domain was purchased, tied to the hosting. Without much experience, in a few hours I sketched a page with a nice timer that counted down to 12 hours on September 27. At the end of the countdown, the youtube clip was supposed to be uploaded, in reality it exists only in the form of sketches in my head.
In the evening, the day before departure, I handed an envelope with the address, with the words "September 27th, something interesting will appear here." At home there was a bunch of kraft paper from the packaging of the parcels, so the envelope from it was pile up, the liner was printed on thick paper. By the way, crumpled kraft paper straightens well with an iron and steam through a towel.
According to the idea for the video, a luminous cube was needed, with face illumination of the edges. There was no surface frosted plexiglass, and frosted in the volume evenly scatters light only into the plane from a certain distance, and when illuminated at the end, it quickly absorbs light, and only edges are highlighted. An ideal option would be to use a special plexiglass for end lighting, but it also could not be found quickly. It was decided to frost the usual clear acrylic. It was cut to size with a laser. As a way of matting, it was decided to use the method from old Soviet books, concentrated sulfuric acid. Having gotten everything I needed and just in case, dressed in a case of a tyvek laden suit, glasses, gloves, a cotton-gauze bandage, imagining myself Heisenberg, I got down to business.
After a couple of hours of experiments, two facts had to be ascertained. The first is that with careful handling and compliance with TB, the acid is completely safe. The second - plexiglass matting in this way will not work. I tried different concentrations, different exposure times, different processing methods. The best result that I managed to achieve was too uneven and did not meet the requirements. Strictly speaking, acrylic is not even matted, but covered with white coating, the problem is that the thickness of this layer varies, and this irregularity is clearly visible when illuminated.
The counter, meanwhile, was not friendly in counting minutes and hours.
It was decided to try sandblasting. Unlike the previous method, this one did an excellent job, all the work took about 15 minutes, and it turned out to be extremely cost-effective, why this option was not considered as the main one from the beginning is not clear.
Finished matte sheets had to be glued together. For this, special acrifix glue was used. To adhere to the correct geometry during gluing, not yet glued plexiglass sheets and adhesive tape were used.
At the end of gluing, the remaining adhesive tape and protective film were removed from the glass.
The manufacturer’s logo is glued to the rear panel.
LED strips are fixed, with a total length of 4 meters, white sheets on the outer edges, so the illumination turned out more evenly.
That's what happened with the backlight.
The remote control, for separate control of the illumination channels, was assembled “on my knees” from what was at hand - micro buttons, a winding and an um thick cardboard ... Twisted pair was also used for wiring. I agree, it looks very ambiguous, but surprisingly, it worked perfectly.
He made the foot for fastening the watch from a 2 mm wire, with a white heat shrinkage seated on top.
Overcoming the problem with the flickering of the LEDs on the video caused by the PSU from the computer used as the power source, temporarily replacing it with the 18650 battery pack, I started shooting. The shooting was carried out in the dark, since it was night outside the window, on the mirrorless panasonic lumix gf-5, there was nothing better at hand, but a pity. Installation (or something like that) was done in Premiere, After Effects. Here's what happened:
September 27 at 00:00 Moscow time, the site uploaded a video and a link to a video stream made through ustream from my old android device. I later replaced the link with an iframe. There was a record of three hours from the broadcast on the page. Thus, it was possible at any time to stop by and look at the gift awaiting the house.
* * *
At five minutes to 12 a beautiful girl in a checkered autumn jacket, to match the invigorating weather of autumn Petersburg, left the train to the station earlier than necessary. Turning on 3g on my smartphone I downloaded an already familiar page and having waited a couple of minutes before midnight, I saw my present, located more than 2000 km away. from her. On the 30th, upon return, the watch was handed in person.
I express my gratitude to everyone who assisted in the implementation of the project.
27september.ru
Well, a small photo gallery:
The girl’s birthday was approaching (I begin to suspect some kind of temporary pattern of this phenomenon), I wanted to make a welcome and slightly unexpected gift.
Feeling the soil a couple of months before the event gave enough information and a good candidate for this role. They became a watch of a rather curious startup Brathwait.
There was only one question, how to present a gift.
An order was placed on the company’s website, and the first phase of waiting came, which, among other things, did not last long. In addition to the slight delay associated with the lack of the required color strap (as in the photo above), delivery was carried out in 12 days.
It is worth noting that the live watch turned out to be as good as in the promotional photo. Packaging is consistent.
While the clock was running, an interesting detail was found out, from 23 to 29 the girl had to go to St. Petersburg on business, i.e. and on her birthday on the 27th, she will be there. A good gift given on time is good, so it was decided to conduct an online presentation, and to give it alive upon arrival. The idea gradually acquired meaningful outlines.
Initially, I wanted to make a link to a video clip on youtube, hand it in an envelope, and open access at 00:00 on 09/27. But there was a week left before departure, and I obviously did not have time to do everything I had planned. The idea of creating a landing page on a free platform slipped by, but from a superficial study it became clear that the page itself, with the necessary functionality, should be sketched faster. The domain was purchased, tied to the hosting. Without much experience, in a few hours I sketched a page with a nice timer that counted down to 12 hours on September 27. At the end of the countdown, the youtube clip was supposed to be uploaded, in reality it exists only in the form of sketches in my head.
In the evening, the day before departure, I handed an envelope with the address, with the words "September 27th, something interesting will appear here." At home there was a bunch of kraft paper from the packaging of the parcels, so the envelope from it was pile up, the liner was printed on thick paper. By the way, crumpled kraft paper straightens well with an iron and steam through a towel.
According to the idea for the video, a luminous cube was needed, with face illumination of the edges. There was no surface frosted plexiglass, and frosted in the volume evenly scatters light only into the plane from a certain distance, and when illuminated at the end, it quickly absorbs light, and only edges are highlighted. An ideal option would be to use a special plexiglass for end lighting, but it also could not be found quickly. It was decided to frost the usual clear acrylic. It was cut to size with a laser. As a way of matting, it was decided to use the method from old Soviet books, concentrated sulfuric acid. Having gotten everything I needed and just in case, dressed in a case of a tyvek laden suit, glasses, gloves, a cotton-gauze bandage, imagining myself Heisenberg, I got down to business.
After a couple of hours of experiments, two facts had to be ascertained. The first is that with careful handling and compliance with TB, the acid is completely safe. The second - plexiglass matting in this way will not work. I tried different concentrations, different exposure times, different processing methods. The best result that I managed to achieve was too uneven and did not meet the requirements. Strictly speaking, acrylic is not even matted, but covered with white coating, the problem is that the thickness of this layer varies, and this irregularity is clearly visible when illuminated.
The counter, meanwhile, was not friendly in counting minutes and hours.
It was decided to try sandblasting. Unlike the previous method, this one did an excellent job, all the work took about 15 minutes, and it turned out to be extremely cost-effective, why this option was not considered as the main one from the beginning is not clear.
Finished matte sheets had to be glued together. For this, special acrifix glue was used. To adhere to the correct geometry during gluing, not yet glued plexiglass sheets and adhesive tape were used.
At the end of gluing, the remaining adhesive tape and protective film were removed from the glass.
The manufacturer’s logo is glued to the rear panel.
LED strips are fixed, with a total length of 4 meters, white sheets on the outer edges, so the illumination turned out more evenly.
That's what happened with the backlight.
The remote control, for separate control of the illumination channels, was assembled “on my knees” from what was at hand - micro buttons, a winding and an um thick cardboard ... Twisted pair was also used for wiring. I agree, it looks very ambiguous, but surprisingly, it worked perfectly.
He made the foot for fastening the watch from a 2 mm wire, with a white heat shrinkage seated on top.
Overcoming the problem with the flickering of the LEDs on the video caused by the PSU from the computer used as the power source, temporarily replacing it with the 18650 battery pack, I started shooting. The shooting was carried out in the dark, since it was night outside the window, on the mirrorless panasonic lumix gf-5, there was nothing better at hand, but a pity. Installation (or something like that) was done in Premiere, After Effects. Here's what happened:
September 27 at 00:00 Moscow time, the site uploaded a video and a link to a video stream made through ustream from my old android device. I later replaced the link with an iframe. There was a record of three hours from the broadcast on the page. Thus, it was possible at any time to stop by and look at the gift awaiting the house.
* * *
At five minutes to 12 a beautiful girl in a checkered autumn jacket, to match the invigorating weather of autumn Petersburg, left the train to the station earlier than necessary. Turning on 3g on my smartphone I downloaded an already familiar page and having waited a couple of minutes before midnight, I saw my present, located more than 2000 km away. from her. On the 30th, upon return, the watch was handed in person.
I express my gratitude to everyone who assisted in the implementation of the project.
27september.ru
Well, a small photo gallery: