Over! its all over!

With one hour to go we are all basically done, jenni is putting the finishing touches on the documentary and its exporting as I type this, and Hong is giving the model a bit of a clean. Unfortunately the batteries of 2 of the lasers are dying, and to replace them would require essentially ripping the whole game apart. I always knew this would eventually happen, but had hoped they could of at least lasted until after the final hand in. So that was a bit of a disappointment.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the assignment though.

Project 3 almost done

Well its been a really stressful couple of days but we are just about there.. Hong and I have been working pretty solidly to get the fabrication and circuitry done. We have run into quite a few hiccups in the process but managed to work through most of them, although it would of been nicer if we had started fabrication earlier (a lot earlier) so we wouldn't of been so rushed, and as a result, been able to come up with some better solutions to several of the issues that came up.

For example, The fan, which was the best I could find the fitted our requirements regarding size (the case had already been constructed at this stage) was still not powerful enough to make the lasers visible, but we just didn't have time to really sort this out unfortunately.

Also, the excess wires that connected the panels, allowing them to be moved, couldn't really be implemented into the case very well, At the last minute Hong suggested soldering small pins to the ends of each of the wires and plugging them into the side of the case, but we didn't have anywhere to fabricate the plugs for these pins, and as the case was already built, (and it was the day before hand in) it was unfortunately too late to implement this.

With the fabrication now basically done, Jenni and I have just been finishing off a few things up, such as making 'K.I.T.T' out of a matchbox car painted black with nail polish. We have begun to film the working game for the documentation and get all our files in order for handing in tomorrow. I also had worked on the groups research findings .pdf, expanding the 'Hardware' 'implementation' and 'Results' sections that Jenni had started to write.

He res a bit of a montage of today's work..

Project 3 Update

Here's some video documentation of a few of the things I've been working on, namely the Lasers, The fan, and the sensors. Its really just a bit of an overview though, I will go into more detail for each below.



The Lasers

I started by hacking apart a cheap laser pointer we purchased from the $2 shop, I removed the push button switch and replaced it with an external sliding switch so that the laser could be mounted inside the game, but be controlled easily from the outside. I then reattached the original 1.5V batteries and reconstructed the casing for the laser using a mixture of Card, Insulation tape, wire and hot clue. Messy but effective.

The Fan

After I had finished fabricating the lasers, I decided the tackle the fan next. Making the laser beams visible was a fairly crucial aspect of our project, and other than hongs brief experiment with the baby powder, nobody had done anything to address this. Jenni and I had toyed with the idea of making our own fans using small electric motors and blades made out of card, but we found the motors were too slow and just didn't generate enough wind. We didn't have a lot of room to work with (just over an inch ) so getting a larger motor was not possible. I headed in to Jaycar to have a look round at what I could use, and found a large computer case fan, it was orientated upwards and had the blades attached around the motor, so easily slotted into the thin space we had available. Although designed to run of 12V, I found it could run of 9V without too much of a noticeable drop in performance.

I looked at two different styles of switches for the fan, a sliding switch, like I used for the lasers, and a push button switch. I liked the idea of the user being able to have quite a lot of control over the fan, rather than just switching it on and leaving it going constantly (which would drain the battery VERY quickly) so I went with the push button switch. A soldered it to a long length of wire so the user could hold it in one hand and control the fan, while maneuvering through the game with the other.

Although once I placed the fan inside the case, Hong and I had our doubts as to weather it would be powerful enough to blow sufficient powder into the air. However at this stage we don't really have any alternatives, as there simply isn't room for any other style of fan, so I guess we will just have to wait and see...

The Sensors

I soldered up the photocell sensors i mocked up on the breadboard when I did my initial experiments a few weeks ago, Each is positioned inside a separate panel, and needed to be connected to the arduino, this required a lot of wires (15 in all) which proved a bit of a nightmare to organise, as the wires going from the arduino to the photocell needed to be long enough to allow for the whole panel to be removed and placed in another slot. We ran into quite a few issues with this, but im slowly sorting it out.
Fabrication

I also helped Hong with the assembly of the panels, positioning the laser and photocell so they aligned correctly proved very difficult, as the only thing we could really use to attach either was Super glue, which was not ideal. In hindsight using the black acrylic was probably quite a bad choice as it has proven quite difficult to work with, and its original glossy finish is now tarnished. By the end of the day we had installed and aligned the laser and photocell in only one panel, but with our method worked out, we should be able to do the remaining four fairly quickly. Unfortunately once this is done, we still have a mountain of stuff left to do before thursday.....

Project 3 update

Okay so to be perfectly honest this project isn't really going to plan, we only have a couple of days left and still have heaps to do and Ive become a little disheartened at our groups lack of team work.

For the past week or so Ive been working on hooking up the external switches for the lasers, what I thought would be a quite simple task has turned out to be incredibly fiddly and frustrating, as the lasers are very temperamental and i burned out 6 of them in the process. The hacking apart and replacing the push button switch, with and external sliding switch was relatively straight forward, I just had to be careful with my soldering as to not overheat the laser too much and damage the diode. Originally I wanted to do away with the 3 1.5V watch battery's they individually running off and use a single 9V battery and power them in 2 sets of 3, wired up in series. I couldn't get this to work and the lasers immediately burned out.

So in the end I just stuck with using the watch battery's they came with, and I ended up having to basically rebuild the entire laser after the new switch was attached, using a combination of Card, Insulation tape and Hot glue. Its not the prettiest solution, but with the lasers being positioned on the inside of the panels and not really visible its no big deal I guess. I will post some video documentation of this when I get a chance.

Ive currently soldered the new switches onto all 6 lasers and tested them all, and I'm just working finishing the card casings for them. Will look in to wiring up the fan tomorrow, but compared to this, that should be pretty straight forward.

From looking at Hongs Blog, It appears as though he has finally managed to get the laser cutting done correctly, better late than never I suppose. Hopefully we can meet up on Monday/Tuesday and assemble it. Not really too sure what Jenni has been up to.

Some Arduino Code

Just a quick snapshot of the code Ive been working on, its a little messy and quite repetitive, I think i can cut out a lot of it by with some functions. I might get Doug to take a look at it tomorrow to see what he thinks.

Even more arduino circuits

I have now got the 6 photocells that we need running simultaneously, I didn't have 6 laser pointers (or 6 hands) with me at the time, so for testing purposes I reversed the values so the light is activated when the laser is shinning on them, instead of when it isn't.

I also had ago at building Jenni's Knight Rider circuit, and then incorporating it with the photocells, so the when the are triggered, the knight rider sequence plays.

And finally I tested the circuit working as required (When the laser beam is broken) with the Knight rider circuit.

More Arduino circuits

Here's another clip from Jenni, I have rewritten the code to allow for 3 photocells to run simultaneously.

Project 3 Update

Okay so Ive been a little slack with keeping the blog up to date, So heres a couple of videos the Jenni filmed of the circuits Ive been working on.

In the first clip, I started off simply using a photocell and a transistor to try and produce the desired effect of the light activating when the laser beam is disrupted. The circuit worked fairly well, however even when the beam was uninterupted the light still illuminated slightly, and when an alarm was attached, it could still be faintly heard.

I experimented using various levels of resistance on the light/ buzzer to try and fix this but couldnt really eliminate it, So i decided to try using the arduino. I hooked up a simple single photocell circuit and using my new found coding abilities (Thanks 285) I managed to get the circuit working perfectly, and was even able to adjust it depending on lighting conditions.