Interface Lab: Final Project

Date: Saturday, 08/15/2026

Class: Interface Lab (IMALR-GT 104)

Name: Janice Vuong

Building off my analog sensor assignment in Interface Lab class + that was inspired by themes from my curiosity syllabus in Exploratory Making class.

The Inspiration & Research 🌺

sundays (2026) 🔗 was inspired by the routines of a Sunday. More specifically, the routines of my (Janice’s) Sunday routine. In my curiosity syllabus (for Exploratory Making class), I had wrote down themes:

• bows/coquette (aka whimsy)
• something for people
• something for jan
• flowers???

For the past few years, I have been buying myself flowers, and just arranging them on my apartment floor. Sometimes arranging flowers and giving it to others, other times, buying a flower subscription and sending others, flowers. Or buying premade arrangements for myself. Regardless flowers, and the act of arranging flowers has been a constant self-care, soothing, routine that is the rhythm of a Sunday for me.

Because I wanted objects to be placed (like the act of floral arranging) in my project, I realized that creating this piece would be about weight, and having to figure out if there are such things, as a weight sensor?

Form / Material / Sensors ⚖️

The analog sensor I chose to work with is a: load cell + HX711 amplifier. More specially, I wanted to work with weight. Objects that would be placed in my art piece, and it would → cause an interaction to occur (ex. a light would turn on).

There is no such thing as a weight sensor. When I was searching on the internet, YouTube tutorials that used an Arduino (the microcontroller I have been primarily familiar with in Interface Lab), the creators were building kitchen scales, or body weight scales that all used a load cell (or many load cells if body weight was involved).

In body weight scales, or kitchen gram scales (if you take it apart), it is composed of a:

• load cell (a rectangular prism brick), and
• a green circuit board (HX711 amplifier) + probably an LED panel (to display the weight)

for some reason load cells are a weak analog sensor, and when you strain (aka push the metal, by placing heavy objects) it sends a signal

however the signal is not enough, and it needs an amplifier (specifically, a HX711 amplifier)

and then the HX711 amplifier → connects to the breadboard / Arduino microcontroller

*but also in my project I was not going to use an LED panel to display weight amounts, that was going to be hidden/only known to me

Making / Building / Fabrication 🗜️

Numerous, many, so many issues previously written for Exploratory Making (Project 02)

I will talk about more about the process of creating sundays 🌺,

Issue 6️⃣ Learning to drill into acrylic material. I have used a drill before (yay! mounting frames and shelves). But nothing about drilling into plastic, or acrylic in this case.

I had chosen an oval planter like vase (because duh! I wanted the object to be a vase that folks would be placing flower stems into). The extremely long oval length (11”) was to accommodate a full-size breadboard that I was working on, until I realize half-size breadboards existed…

✅ Plastic Drill Bits! (Thank you Phill!) and using the plastic drill bit (5/18”) I was able to drill 1” square hole to accommodate my power cable outside of the housing

Issue 7️⃣ I had installed my load cell upside down, and was receiving negative weight values. When testing my sensor and placing various weights, I kept getting negative values. At the time (a week earlier), I did not care. I was just so happy that the sensor worked and could sense weight, that I had written all my code for negative weight values. It wasn’t until something broke in my code, that I had to debug, that I learned that it would be much easier if I could have positive values.

✅ And the issue that could cause my load cell to output negative values (even when objects are placed) was that the load cell was placed upside down….

Issue 8️⃣ Sometimes LED WS2812B programmable light strips just stop working….

One final test (or play testing) before shortening the long LED light strip, my light strip stopped working (stopped displaying light).

• And I knew my code was not an issue (it was working the night before and I did not change any code)
• The objects (their weights) had not changed, and have weight. So that can’t be the issue
• My load cell + HX711 amplifier still sensed weight, and verified by my Arduino IDE, that displayed different weight values on my Serial Monitor output screen when I was testing

However the led light strip just didn’t turn on… (even when I tested with strandtest.ino)

My classmate (Dara <33) had her LED WS2812B light strip handy and tested her light strip in my wires + my Arduino microcontroller. And her LED light strip worked!!!! (yayyy so it really was a light strip problem)

✅ Ordered a different brand of LED WS2812B light strip

What went well 💞

I want to write about things that went well, because so many things went wrong

• I didn’t give up (aka: I kept trying and trying, and I got sick, and I still tried) a bit crazy (slept overnight on the IMA/ITP floor for one night), but I am proud for not giving up because this all new forms / material to me!
• asking for HELP (shout-out to Dara!) and my boyfriend (Nicolas), and my IMA Low Res classmates (Guavas <3), Phil, Jesse, and Tobi
• My Mom (Karen) & Chris (brother) for coming to my *first* ever art show and supporting me
• ITP Shop Floor Staff (Antonia, Arjun, Matthew) for being patient with me when I needed to find a tool, borrow a tool, or access
• 3D Printing Machine: Glad it was a smooth process (also because I tried it in Exploration 03)
• Laser Cutting Machine: 10/10 no notes, the fumes were not so bad, but also maybe because I was cutting acrylic, and not wood
• Peel-n-Stick Vinyl: Slightly scarred by YouTube tutorials on load cells, but at least peel-n-stick vinyl application was straightforward enough

In a past blog (Interface Lab), this was a difficult class to me, I struggled, and cried. It is beautiful, that sundays 🔗, became my final project, that I am extremely proud of.