Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Third Class

For week three, we focused our class period on learning to use Digital Project, which is a 3D modeling program. This class was very interesting, though at some points moved a little to fast for me to keep up, but was very useful. Our professor also put tutorials online so that if we missed something in class we have a reference to go back to, which is extremely useful. We then were divided, once again, into new groups of six and were assigned to make another heliotropic design using the arduino boards and circuts, however, this time we needed to make it follow the sun and we also had to make a Digital Project version of our design. The physical arduino design has to be made up of three light collecting cells that follow the sun, while the Digital Project design had to be more of a full version of our physical project, they do not have to be exactly the same, the ardiuno prototype just has to be simliar to our final idea. We met in our groups after class and my group right away started tossing out ideas for our project. Our meeting went very well and we were all happy with our main ideas that we came up with and what direction we wanted to take our project.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Completing Homework 2: Both group meetings

So for our first group meeting, my entire group got together and for the first 10 to 15 minutes and made sure we were all on the same page of what we wanted to do for our project and how is was going to work. We decided to scrap our original idea completely and go with a ball socket idea where two servos were taped together and acted like a joint to cover the x-axis and y-axis, so that no matter were the light was, our design could follow it. We decided to build a triangular face to put the LDRs on and did one in each corner of the equilateral triangle. We soldered longer wires onto the LDRs so that the LDRs could be punched through the cardboard face and far away from the arduino and other circuits. Then, we attached the base of our project to the servo motors and then the servo motors to a box that contained all of the wires and circuits. We were having trouble getting our project to work, it would basically shake back and forth, like it was "seizing". We decided, for simplicity, to used two arduino boards and connect one LDR to one board and the other two to the other board. However, the system was still having problems and would not work properly, but would for a pattern in it's movement. We played around with the program multiple times, trying the most basic code, like the one showed in class, to complicated editions to that code to try to fix our problem, but nothing was working. So, we decided to call it a day and come back to our project the next day. The picture below just shows how much "fun" my group was having trying to get our project to work!


The first solution we tried at our next meeting was to add another LDR in the "middle" of our face. However, we still were getting a repeating patter from the motors that did not follow the light. After playing with every LDR to make sure they worked, all the motors and circuits, and the codes themselves, we realized that we had written our code to work with the computer by transferring values back and forth from the arduino to the computer and vice versa. The problem was that we forgot this when we were trying to get our machine to work and were unplugging both arduinos from the computer and just using the external plugs for power. So, once we used both the computer and the external power source, our project worked perfectly! Me and another team member stayed a little late after that meeting to try to put lights on our face but had no luck, seeing as it was extremely late and we no longer had the patience to work on it. We did, however, make the LDRs more centered in the middle of the face and closer together. We now were using four LDRs in the center of the face (like a diamond) where the top and bottom LDRs caused y-axis movement, while the left and right LDRs cause x-axis movement. Our project apparently (had to miss the demistration due to another class) worked extremely well and we were all decently happy with our final design. Though, if we had figured out our issues with our system earlier, we would have tried to make it more flashy by adding lights or etc. Below is a picture of our final project.

Second Day of Class

The second day of class was interesting. Some of us got to show off our arduino homework assignments (many of which I felt were much better than mine!) then we learned about heliotropic properties and systems, which was quite interesting. We also got to play around with our arduino systems to build different circuits that could, with use of a LDR, detect light and it's intensity, run a manually controlled motor, and could run a servo. Using these new circuits and arduino programs (which were prewriten) we were divided up into new groups and assigned a project that would be heliotropic; meaning it would find and follow light. I liked everyone in my new group, however, we had a bit of a communication problem. No one was really on the same page when we started building our final project because we didn't spend much time on the planning phase due to only having an hour or so to complete the whole project. We also had group members cutting each other off either to say something wouldn't work, to ask a question before the person was done talking, or to try to explain something before a group member was done asking a question. Our final class project worked to an extent (better than the other groups if I am remembering correctly) but it was not what all of us had in mind and still did not work well. We had tried to design it (indirectly) like a sun dial, that when the light was focus on a specific LDR in one of three quadrants, the servo would spin and arrow to point to where the light was at. It was a good idea and was different from what the other groups did but wasn't great. Once our assignment got extended to finish the project but the next class, we decided that at our first meeting we would all try to get on the same page for how we really wanted our project to work and to look and go from there.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

ARDUINO!!!


I some how managed to not only program the aduino, but I managed not to break it or my computer as well! It was not as bad as I thought it would be, was easy once I figured out a couple of little things. It was fun though and it makes me excited for the rest of the class. The picture above is my cover for my LED lights and I have also posted a video of my final HW #1 assignment.

Monday, September 14, 2009

First day of class!

We had are first day of class on 9/11. We had a quick intro lecture and an explanation of the class and our task of the day. Once we got in our group, we quickly started coming up with ideas, however, we were not really writing down every idea that we had. We also were using a long piece of paper to write down some of our ideas, which was very difficult for everyone to read. Then, we were going idea by idea and doing pros and cons, kind of shooting down ideas as we went. Our professor came to talk to us and we decided that we were not going to do any cons for our new ideas, and we were going to write down an idea for every piece of material given to us to use. Also, instead of using the piece of paper, we wrote everything on the white board so that everyone could see. We all worked together and did pros and cons and decided that for our project we would make a funnel system that would filter sand into four different boxes, in hopefully the right proportions. The way the sand got into the funnel through the use of a sling-shot type contraption where we put a cup of sand in a rubber band. The rubber band was attached to a metal pole and then the cup of sand was shot into the funnel. My group worked very well together and had a great time working on the project. We laughed the entire time and joked around and were excited about our ideas. However, though we had fun, we managed to stay focused on the task and got what we wanted to achieve finished. All of the groups projects were impressive and I think everyone took away lessons about how to deal with the other students and I now have a better idea of how non-engineering students work, think, and see things. Next task, homework one!