Sensory Wall is an interactive sculpture designed to help you reduce stress and improve mood with touch, colored light, and sound. It can be placed in homes, schools, or workspaces to help reduce anxiety. Bringing a personal experience to the public can raise awareness of the importance of managing stress and anxiety for improving mental and physical well-being while helping people develop positive strategies for effectively releasing stress and anxiety.

Supplies

White translucent acrylic, ⅛” thickness
Wood board 48” x 24”
Woodblocks

Laser cutter
Table saw
Mitre saw

Soldering iron & solder
Wire strippers
Third-hand tool
Conductive tape
Double-sided foam tape Sellotape
Wood glue
Heating gun
Hot glue gun

Step 1: Step 01 Building Your Outline

The Sensory Wall design uses outlines of hexagonal figures connected to each other. The pattern can also be designed using other geometric shapes, like triangles and squares, to make each module uniform and interconnected with the others.

For simplicity and transparency, I have chosen ⅛” thick translucent acrylic. You can also use different colors, opacities, and thicknesses of acrylic to play with the amount of light diffusion and to achieve your desired light effect.

For the first step, create an Adobe Illustrator file to be used on a laser cutter. Considering the size of the acrylic, the size of the plywood, and the number of modules I want to build, I will cut 12 hexagons with a radius of 2.8” each. To cut the acrylic on the laser cutter, each hexagon must have a line thickness of 0.001 inches and a hollow inside to make the cut.

For this next step, I used the 32"x20" laser cutter, but you can also use the 24"x18" laser cutter as long as your material size is smaller than or equal to the laser bed size. Ensure that your file follows the setting for the laser cutter and upload your file for cutting!

Building the hexagons is for the later test of light diffusion, and also for combining the overall shape and organize where to put the electronic component.

hexgon laser cutter file.ai
Download

Step 2: Step 02 Design and Cut the Layout

Before building the circuit, we need to layout the Sensory Wall. Here I use 19 modules to layout the shape. You can also choose your own number and shape. Don't forget to design where the circuit hide behind the modules.

Step 3: Step 03 Solder the Circuit

For the capacitive touching sensor, look at the wire up and code instructions. For the neopixel, look at the adafruit instructions, too.

I also use ADC touch library because the other touching sensor I bought is not working. Adding ADC touch wire and code can help you gain four extra touch (A0, A1, A2, A3).

Also solder the L and R speaker to the soundboard and wire everything up using the circuit diagram.

SensoryWall code01:https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eN382fd3UBVZUSXHsHUvHBBqelp1FbSl

SensoryWall code02: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1yntPt486mSX-QqKLNkfedgbzSdnsGTCE

(Sorry, due to the internal server error, I can't upload the code file right now)

Step 4: Step 04 Write the Code

You can first use only two or three neopixels to test the color and effect.

I upload two codes. The first one is the original one with white, blue and green colors and doesn't have brightness effect. This one is more sensitive than the second one with the brightness effect with purple and white colors.

Step 5: Step 05 Build the Connection and Test the Code

Between the hexagons and the wood board, I use wood glue.

Then extend the wires for the touching sensor test and put them behind each of the hexgons with light. In order for you to gain solidity due to the fact there are so many wires inside the installation. I suggest you use hot glue to glue the wires along the small wood blocks. And don't overlap these wires. Test each wire after you add a new one. Unplug and replug the USB every time you test one to gain the zero state.

And after that, using double-sided tape to glue the hexagons to the wood. Also fix the Adruino board, breadboard and speaker to the board. Leave a space for the cable to come out for future testing.