WEEK 13
Catch up & Final
Overview
This week, I three goals:
1. catch up in HtM
2. finish final for Tangible Interfaces
3. Get as far as possible on final project w/ Kels
Luckily, a ton of overlap so was pretty successful!
catching up HtM
After many failed attempts at making a successful ESP32 board (see any of my pages from last month) I decided after class to not leave the lab until I figured it out. I milled again, but the lines were too thin. So, I thickened all the traces by hand and tried again. It was successful, but Chris Zhu, waiting for the milling machine, noticed my schematics were off!! AFTER ALL THIS TIME. He helped me get the schematic sorted out, a Hanukkah miracle!! (the multimeter last week was correct, most of my board was not connected to power). Now, the board was functional and compact!
Around midnight, I left with a completed board that took in the blink function! Planned to get internet the next day.
A trip down ESP32 memory lane?
Thursday started out slow. After many failed attempts Thursday to connect the board to wifi, someone noted that changing hotspot name to something without aprostrophes worked. And it did! The board connected to wifi and I sent some random float/int thing.
Because I would certainly need a GUI for at least one of my projects, I decided to hold off on that and focus on tangi-rine. Here is what it ultimately looked like electronically
finishing tangi
Capacitors
Gabby took care of molding and casting 3 silicone/ecoflex ball shells and I took care of electronics (clearly the expert lol no) Using what I had learned (thanks to Rob, our hero) in I/O week, I made 3 PP capacitors for pressure sensing for 3 balls. First, milled parallel plates.
made a 4-way intersection, hot glueed the top, shrink wrapped the exposed wires,
then creating a fixed, rigid wedge in the ball for the capacitor to squish against. by the time all the components were made, it looked a lot like a snowman vomiting wires meow whell
Attempting to superglue the ball together, realized hot glue does not stick to silicone. Gabby took care of final assembly the next day but to make sure everything else was ready, duct tape worked for testing. Unfortunately, the LEDs did not turn on. After HOURS and stress eating a bajillion amish cookies, I asked Nathan for help. The multimeter showed current was flowing and my code had worked before.
DID YOU KNOW PROGRAMMABLE LEDS HAVE DIRECTIONAL DATA??
A quick resolder annnd:
Testing the pressure sensor
Gabby finished gluing/assembling the balls (I guess you glue silicone with more siliocone) and the next day we filmed our project. All in all it turned out pretty great, though we didn't have enough balls to make the wifi communication worth it, so will have to do the GUI for final project.
TO SEE VIDEO OF IT WORKING. Link to video: TANGIEEEE
Also just want to note that I have been sleeping much better thanks to week "make something big" which, the dogs weren't using before so update--dogs use it now:
Final project w/ kels
Finally, it was time to get as far as possible on the final project with kels. Luckily, tangi-rines had very similar mechanics as far as I/O goes and Kels had been doing a lot with collecting materials over the past month. We decided to start with the attachment to the track so that Kels could cover the box with foam. We wanted something super strong but lightweight that, ultimately, the styrofoam could be glued to underneath the foam, and that could encase the electronics in a small, random box we found (and got the ok to use). However, the styrofoam was alread assembled so we needed to do some digging
Projects are so much more fun with friends
Finally, after drilling (aka makeshift mill, technique used in make something big week), chiseling, and digging,
And left a nice little mess for Nathan
JK JK we cleaned up thoroughly :)
While Kels worked on electronics, I worked on the aluminum box. Not wanting to go to Home Depot, I made all the parts byt cutting apart
a long while later, a robot head fit to fit an electronics box in its mouth
oops. We can make more space for robot head wednesday :)
