For my final project, I was a bit inspired by the current pandemic and the need to stay in touch with your friends, as far as they may be. A few years ago, I remember seeing "friendship lamps" on the internet. Essentially, two people have partner lights, and if one person presses their light, their friend's lamp will light up. I really like this idea, so I wanted to build on it and create something a bit more personal.

For my project, I'm creating a sort of personal voicemail machine, where each person has a "lamp" that has a microphone and speaker. The lamp is connected to the internet, where it pushes and pulls voice recordings from a private server. I spent time thinking about how I would shape the object, and what exactly it would look like. I didn't want it to look too much like a lamp, because it isn't one, but light is incorporated into the object so I had to figure out a proper way to display it. Eventually I landed on a form––there would be an upper casing supported by a patterned base. The casing would hold all of the inside parts, and a small light strip would be attached to the bottom of the casing, allowing light to shine through the patterened base.

I then used Fusion 360 to make a model of my object, but I did run into some difficulties. With a laptop that's running out of memory (or is it RAM?), any program that requires a lot of it makes my computer restart. I did manage to get the body, as pictured to the side, but I wasn't sure how to create the pattern on the base. I did some research, but I couldn't find tutorials for objects that aren't rounded. Apparently, there is a pattern function on Solidworks, so I'll try downloading that instead and completing my casing.