WEEK 3. THE ROUGHEST WEEK.
4/25.28/2017
5/2/2017
FEEDBACK FROM TRACY.
After I finished with the first wooden prototype and had a clear idea of what the final project would look like, I went to talk with Tract to receive some feedback.
Overall, she had a positive reaction to it but she definitely though the hinges were too tight and bulky. Also, another thing she mentioned was that I should cover up the Arduino and the wires.
MAKING A NEW REFINED STOOL.
With more clean wood, I started making a refined version of what I had. I would be much more careful with the screwing and made sure the pilot holes were at the right place.
HINGES.
For the hinges, I went to talk to Larry. As mentioned in the last week 2 blog post, the hinges I ordered were door hinges and it was not a good idea to use them because of the bulkiness, sturdiness, and the function of it. Luckily, Larry had two hinges that were similar to what I was looking for!! and decided to use them.
The photo is exactly what it looks like but photo from the internet.
MAGNETS.
Now I had the refined wooden structure and the hinges together but there was two big problems.
1. Now that the hinges were a lot less sturdy, the legs would flop down before even using it, making the stool not foldable. (which is the whole part of the initial design.)
2. After unfolding the legs to 90 degrees, which was done easily, now the legs would easily be folded with a little bit of force and would not stay at 90 degrees. (umm…safety please?)
I went back to brainstorming to and thought of two ideas.
Below is a photo of the first idea. and second is the magnet idea.
I thought about attaching a block of wood to the back of the cubby so that the legs can be tucked in the space between the top part of the bottom shelf and the block. However, as soon as the stool is pulled the legs would eventually fall down.
The second was the magnet idea.
From a previous architecture project that I used magnets to hold something together, I got the idea. I needed the legs to a)stay unfolded and b) stay folded. and thought about having magnets at the connecting places.
From there I used the super magnets at We-Lab and drill a hole exactly the same diameter and after using epoxy, I hammered the magnets down to make sure it wouldn’t come off after attaching to each other. (super magnets are really strong so…)
This is what it looked like. You can see the two magnets on each leg.
For the magnets at the end of the legs that keep the legs folded, the magnets became too strong that it was hard to pull the legs down so I used the hot glue gun to make a barrier and decreased the magnetic force!
PHOTOCELLS + CODING.
Using what we learned in class I was able to figure out the code in one night which was fairly less stressful!
Although, I did struggle on some parts.
1. How to incorporate both photocells to read.
2. Deciding on the threshold.
For the second struggle, at first the photocell read,,
Normal lighting = 757
Completely pressed on with my finger = 365
5mm above finger (like the actual distance between the photocell and the leg)=550.
And it worked for the video above to make the Light_Threshold at 600 so that was what I had initially.
I also tested out making two thresholds, Light_Threshold=700 and Dark_Threshold=500 and having the LED light up when the value was >700 and LED off when <500. However I realized having one threshold didn’t change much for the accuracy since the movement of the legs going 0 degrees to 90 degrees is less than 1 second and light comes in right after it is unfolded.
However, when I moved the wires and breadboard to the actual stool, it suddenly didn’t work. I tested each of the photocell if it was working and also for the LED and also checked the serial monitor and also the cable the connected the computer and Arduino… and the problem was…
All this time I was testing with the photocell upwards when actually it would be installed downwards(with much less light to start with.) So the threshold was way to high at first.
I ended up with having the LIGHT threshold at 25 which was surprising low but working.
SOLDERING + WIRING.
After figuring out the coding and where the wire needs to the connected, I started soldering to make the LED and photocells be able to reach where I wanted them to be.
I first had the orange resistor for both photocells so I had to re-solder and some of the soldering between the wires were fragile and kept coming off, but other than that I was able to wire everything in a few hours. I doesn’t look very organized but…
MAKING THE POSTER.
This was when I made the poster.
FINISHING UP!!!!!
Now I was ready to make everything look nicer now that the basic structure and features were complete.
SANDPAPER.
I spent hours of rounding the edges and scraping the edges of the legs so they fold smoothly against the floor. However, the work definitely paid off as the surface got much much smoother and now no worries for the children to get hurt by the rough edges!
COVERING UP.
To hide all the Arduino and wires I covered up most of it using thin wood paper. I chose wood to unify the over all natural wooden design.
DRAWING FEET.
I used the soldering iron to draw the feet! (The feet are 16cm/6inch)
Last but not least………
RAILS.
The very last step was screwing the rails to the cubby and the stool. I’ve never made a drawer so I had some time with the instructions and made extra care that bother rails were parallel.
However, I made one mistake at this point. The legs ended up to be shorter than the full height of the bottom drawer so I had to lower the rails by 1 inch.
Ideally, it should not have space between the stool and the bottom part of the cubby.
FINALLY FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
