Final Project Week 3

We spent this past week creating a cardboard prototype of our final product and doing some research to figure out what sort of materials we needed to buy.

After doing a bit of math, mental deconstruction, and the help of Solid Works, we were able to calculate the amount of plywood that we would need for our project. We had to first decide how each piece would fit into another – does this piece go on top or does this other piece. Once we figured out all the details, we were able to conclude that one sheet of 4ft x 8ft would be enough. This is great because one sheet costs about $26.50 and we didn't want to blow our whole budget on wood. There is a very small margin of error when it comes to our wood usage, so hopefully, once
we get our hands on the plywood, the cutting will go smoothly! *knocks on wood to be safe*

In addition to the wood, we needed to buy some drawer rails. In our previous posts, we talked about how we were planning to use wheels, but after consulting Amy, she told us that drawer slides would be much easier to use. We managed to find some on Amazon that were relatively cheap – around $9 for a pair.

We also added some support pieces after consulting with Larry. After a brief discussion about our plan, Larry suggested that for added support, we should add some L brackets to the underside of our design. We thought that this was great advice and was able to find some for about $2 a piece.

When we brought up the idea of a handle to Amy, she shared with us the idea of having a hole instead of a handle. By creating a hand hole (where we've labeled handle), the children can easily open the cubby without the fear of running into them on a daily basis. Plus this lowers the initial estimated cost of our cubby.

Our initial plan includes having hand holds on the cubby for the kids to grab onto for balance when they step onto the cubby buddy. Becky was very excited about our idea, however, we are having second thoughts about having handles for fear that the kids might run into them. We are planning to include some handles in our prototype, but will definitely bring up our concerns with Becky during our Pilot Day.

We also managed to write up a working Arduino code for the
flashing LEDs. When the button is pressed, the drawer is pushed in, the LEDs should be off. When the button is unpressed, the drawer is not pushed in, the LEDs should be blinking.

It is a fairly simple code, but since we haven't worked with Arduino in a few weeks, it took a little bit of a refresher to remember how the wires lined up. With the help of our old blog posts, we were able to figure out the connections with no problem.

Here's a video of our blinking LED code:

Since we're using an Arduino board for our project, we needed to learn how to solder our wires and board together. Vivian, Rachel, and I already have a little experience with soldering from Physics 108, but we thought a refresher would be very helpful.

Soldering is the process of creating an electrical connection between two electronic parts. Using a soldering iron to heat up the pieces to be connected, we then bring a piece of conductive wire near the pieces. This wire will than melt and connect our two parts. As the melted piece of wire contains lead, it is better to err on the side of caution and avoid breathing in any fumes.


After Amy's demo of the soldering process, we were able to put together a small either robot or spaceship with blinking lights. I chose the robot!

All-in-all, I feel that our group is in a good place. The biggest challenge will definitely be getting the boards cut and assembled in time for Friday's pilot day.