Final Blog Post #2

Pitch at the Child Study Center

During our pitch to at the Child Study Center, Professor Gleason seemed to enjoy our idea, but she had a few suggestions for things to change. Because the children do not have a great sense of time, she wanted to add some type of feature to warn them that the activity they are currently doing is ending soon. In order to address this, we decided to have the LEDs around the activity blink for a certain amount of time before the transition period starts.

Another feature that Professor Gleason suggested was to have both the amount of time the LEDs blink before the transition time starts, as well as the amount of time for transition time itself adjustable. This addition to our idea would allow it to be customizable depending on the schedule or atmosphere in the room each day.

In order to implement these changes, we decided to add two potentiometers with knobs that the teacher could easily turn to the desired time. These controls will be placed on a small panel next to the “clock.”

Building the Prototype

After we returned from the CSC, we began to build our prototype out of foam core. After building our prototype we decided to move the arm from the back of the structure to the front in order to allow it to spin more freely. We also shortened the arm turned the circle into an arrow to make to more clear what activity they are on. We also decided to have the pictures associated with the activities attached with velcro so that they can be easily switched if desired.

This process was fairly simple and lead us to believe that building the physical structure for our “Transition Clock” will not by the more difficult part of our project, but rather the wiring and coding.

Finalizing Our Materials Order

When finalizing our materials order, we also made many changes to our design. We began by looking at buttons and knobs that would be used for the teacher to activate and customize the “clock.” We decided on the clear 33mm arcade button ($2.95) and slim metal potentiometer knobs ($0.95).

When looking at lights, Amy suggested using LED strips rather than individual LEDs in order to avoid having to do an unreasonably large amount of soldering. We ended up ordering an Analog RGBW LED Strip with 60 LED per meter ($19.95/m).

Because these LEDs come in straight strips, we had to alter our design slightly. Instead of having the pictures representing each activity in a circle, they will be in squares, and the arrows will be straight instead of rounded.

After getting our materials finalized, we started to plan out what our code will need to do. We initially did this using everyday language (pictured below) and the next step will be to convert it into arduino code.

We also need to check back in with the CSC in order to find out which age group we will be working with in order to get more details about their schedule.