Design Prompt
Prototype and document a Phone Add-On device/object.
What qualifies as a phone add-on as opposed to an accessory? How is the device/object connected to or powered by the phone? Does the interaction serve any purpose? How do the form factor and attributes relate to the topic?
Design Description
When I was in Middle School, I sometimes read Manka on my phone while pretending to do my homework. I thought I had fooled my parents very well until one day my mother pointed out at the end of her patience that every time she saw me doing homework with my phone facing down, I was doing something else on my phone a second ago.
We realized that having the phone facing down is an important symbol in terms of human relations. With your phone screen facing up, you might accidentally reveal something you don't want other people to know, and this also gives you a sense of insecure when you are actually trying to hide something :)
So we design this phone add-on - Never Up, which protects your privacy by always having your phone screen facing down on the table.
Process
Our first approach was to use springs to flip the phone upside down when the mechanism on the back was triggered by gravity. Even though trying out springs with different forces and sizes, we couldn't give it enough force to trigger the mechanism.
We then tried to use a motor to flip the phone. To keep the add-on size small, we first tried to use a micro servo, but it didn't have enough torque so couldn't even lift up the phone.
We finally go with the MG995 high torque servo motor and it successfully flipped the phone on its first attempt.
