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Jimmy in the Box:

Where Paper Crafting Meets Electronics and Coding

Motto: “Craft, code, and play to learn!”

Webb Origami Design Challenge

Boston, MA, USATeam Web Site: https://bit.ly/3D7Tcar�Project Web Site: https://github.com/HSSBoston/jimmy-in-the-box

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Our Project

  • Our team members have diverse skills and experience:
    • Origami crafting
    • Internet-of-Things (IoT) programming with Raspberry Pi

  • We all are WOW-ed by how the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) uses origami-like folding and unfolding.

  • Our goal: Making computerized origami models for JWST
    • JWST’s deployment process looked like a Jack-in-the-box for us!
      • So, we decided to replace “Jack” with “Jimmy” for our project name,�respecting Mr. Webb, who supported many science projects at NASA.

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Origami Crafting for Primary & Secondary Mirrors

  • Customized an existing hexagonal tessellation strategy (by Eric Gjerde) to make our model more similar to JWST’s primary mirror.
  • Made a hinge-inspired craft to model the secondary mirror’s folding and unfolding mechanisms, w/ a paper tape, plastic straw, glue and bamboo skewer.

Hex tessellation as the primary mirror

Demo Video

Hinge-inspired model for�the secondary mirror

TAKESHI’s�VIDEO�HERE

Demo Video

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Origami Crafting for Sun Shields

  • Folded “long” hexagons and stacked them to model JWST’s sun shields.
  • Used sheet protectors as origami papers and slung five layers of them between foundation bars with strings.

JWST’s Sun Shields

How to make Our Shield

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Turning Origami Crafts to Internet-of-Things (IoT) Device

  • Wanted our telescope models to actively do something, not only�being viewed passively.
  • Integrated a Raspberry Pi (or Raspi; credit card sized computer) with origami crafts, so our model can do what the real telescope does.
  • Our computerized origami models
    • Take pictures with cameras and push buttons.
    • Keep track of the current location (latitude, �longitude and elevation) with GPS receivers.

RasPi

GPS receiver

Origami Webb Camera

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Circuits and Cloud DB App

Python Apps

  • Made 3 circuits to wire up a camera, �a push button and a GPS receiver.
  • Set up a cloud database (Kintone) app to store data from a Raspi, convert meters to feet and show a stored location on Google Maps.
  • Periodically takes a picture, gets the current location (latitude, longitude and elevation) and uploads those data to Kintone.
  • Detects that a push button is pressed, takes a picture and uploads it to Kintone.

GPIO 19

GPIO 26

Push

button

GPS�Receiver

Raspi

Camera

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Future Work

Prototype Models #1, #2 and #3

  • Set up a Web page with videos, diagrams and code to help anyone�interested reproduce our origami crafts and IoT telescope models.
  • Come up with extra tessellation strategies for origami crafting.
  • Use extra sensors such as gyroscope and magnetometer telescope models
  • Study how origami techniques can solve other challenges in space; Can we fold and unfold ISS modules, complex satellites or even houses?