Week 21

Tracking my progress

What is the deadline? How much time do I have left?

My final presentation will be on 20th of June. I set my deadline for making my final project work on 17th of June. So I have two days to make video and presentation.

What tasks have been completed?

• The basic structure and the parts of the orrery has been made.
• All the PCBs have been made.
• Wiring the PCBs has been finished.
• Programming for each device including the stepper motor, LED strip lights and the capacitive sensor has been done.

What tasks remain?

• Designing and making the bevel gears for the earth's tilted axis by 3D printing. The teeth of the normal gears got stuck.
• Making a support wheel which holds the weight of the rotating body by 3D printing. I realized that the support part needs some kind of wheel so that it rotats smoothly with the body.
• Make connection part for four wires of the stepper motor with copper sheet by vinyl cutting. The stepper motor will rotate and PCB for the stepper controller will be stored in the fixed body. I need to make connection between the motor and controller. The design has been completed. I need to cut the copper sheet with vinyl cutter.
• Programming for the capacitive sensors and LED strip lights and the stepper motor. Programming for each device has been completed, but connection with input and output devices has not been done.
• Complete documentation for the final project and make video and presentation.

What has worked? what hasn't?

• The gears function properly.
• Each input device (hall effect sensor and capacitive sensor) and output device (LED strip lights and the stepper motor) works with PCBs and the code that I have used.
• The gear which rotats earth is not working. The teeth are stuck because of the angle of the axis. I need to make the bevel gears.
• I realized there is a problem in the current design. The North pole of the earth should always point Polaris, but in my design, it is pointing the sun since it is rotating around the sun. So Finland is always in summer :D However, considering time limit, I leave this problem as it is at this moment because it requires to change whole design. When I make all other functions work, I will modify the design by adding a gear which rotates the earth with the same speed in oposite direction as it goes around the sun, so that the earth will always point the same direction.

What questions need to be resolved?

• How to design bevel gears. There are many examples to make bevel gears with 90 degrees shaft angle but I need to figure out how to make gears with 23.4 degrees shaft angle.
• When I tested activating LED strip lights by capacitive sensor with ATTiny44, it did not work although it worked with Arduino board with the same code. I need to solve this problem.

What will happen when?

• 9-10th of June: Designing and 3D printing the bevel gears and the support wheel. Cutting the copper sheet for connection for the motor.
• 11th-15th of June: Programming. Mostly writing the code to activate LED strip lights and the stepper motor with the capacitive sensors. If I have enough time, I will write the code to change the colour of LEDs by hall effect sensor.
• 16-17th of June: Final check
• 18-19th of June: Completing documentation and making video and presentation.

What have you learned?

In addition to the basic process and techniques of digital fabrication, the most important learning from Fab Academy was management of the project. Especially supply time management and spiral development have been important for me to complete all the assignment. In the beginning, it was difficult to work in this way and I was planning and trying to do something big from the beggining. But while I was working on each week's assignment and fighting with limited time, I have learned to start from something small and repeat it with modification for the better result.