Final Blog Post

The Transition Clock

One issue the Child Study Center was looking to resolve is the children’s struggle with transitions between activities. They often get distracted by outside factors and take a long time to move from one activity to another. Kelsey and my project aims to provide more structure to transition times between activities in order to teach the children to transition more efficiently at a young age and to allow more time for the activities themselves. To address these goals we have created the “Transition Clock”.

When an activity is taking place, the LEDs around the picture that corresponds to that activity are lit up. After the button in pressed, the LEDs around the activity begin to blink to warn the children that the current activity is ending soon. Next, the arrow pointing to the next activity lights up and the clock “hand” rotates until it is pointing to the next activity, moving so that it arrives as the transition period is ending. When the transition period is over, the LEDs around the next activity light up. The amount of time for the warning and the transition can each be set to five, seven, or ten minutes by turning the appropriately labelled knobs before pressing the button. The knobs, which allow the teacher to adjust the amount of time for the warning and transition periods, consist of potentiometers whose positions are read by an arduino and converted into time. After the transition period after the last activity, all LEDs shut off and the next time the button is pressed, the cycle starts over.

Instructions for use-
Step 1: Turn each respective dial to set the amount of time for the warning and transition (5, 7 or 10 minutes)
Step 2: Push the button to begin the warning. After the warning is over the transition period will start and end automatically.
Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2 at the beginning of each transition period.


Week 1:

During the first week, Kelsey and I began by brainstorming many different ways to design a “transition poster” in order to address the above problem at the Child Study Center. We considered having a linear design consisting of a list of the daily activities, each with a corresponding LED that would light up during that time and blink during the transitioning period. We also considered having many LEDs for each activity that would slowly light up to show the passage of time, but one issue we considered was that the amount of time for each activity was not consistent day to day, so we would need an easy way for the teacher to change the amount of time allotted for each row of LEDs to fully light up.

After throwing around many different ideas, we settled on a “Transition Clock” that would tell the kids what activity they were currently doing, what activity was next, and during transition times, give them a set amount of time that would encourage them to transition efficiently to the next activity. Initially we wanted the LEDs on our clock to be accompanied by a circle that would move around the clock throughout the day, stopping at each activity as they were taking place, and we planned to make our clock out of Delrin.

Week 2:

We began week 2 by pitching our idea to Professor Gleason at the Child Study Center. She seemed to enjoy our design, but 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 added the “warning” to our clock. Another feature that Professor Gleason suggested was to have both the amount of time for the warning, as well as the amount of time for transitioning adjustable, which we ended up adding.

We then 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 and turned the circle into an arrow to make it more clear what activity is taking place. We also considered having the pictures attached with velcro so that they could easily be switched if desired.

Prototype #1

At the end of the week we ordered the materials we needed from Adafruit. We purchased a clear 33mm arcade button ($2.95) and 2 potentiometers ($0.95) with slim metal 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 a 4 meter analog RGBW LED strip with 60 LED per meter ($19.95/m). We also decided to make our clock out of wood rather than Delrin.

After getting our materials finalized, we started to plan out what our code would need to do. We initially did this using everyday language (pictured below) before converting it into arduino code.


Week 3:

During week 3 we made a second foam core prototype using SolidWorks and the laser cutter. We then altered the SolidWorks design to include additional holes for the ends of the LED strips to go through.

Prototype #2

SolidWorks Design #2

Over the course of this week we were also able to code a majority of what we needed for our project. Initially the changing of the lights with each button press was figured out with help from an online tutorial. The next step was to add the time variability of the LEDs with the potentiometers. Then, the continuous rotation servo was added to the circuit and sketch. The continuous servo can be coded to rotate at different speeds, rather than at different angles like the standard servo, which made coding the clock “hand” to move a certain distance in a certain amount of time difficult. Also, the distance the servo rotated when at a certain speed for a certain time was inconsistent, partially because of the effect gravity has on the hand when it is moving with or against it. Because of these issues, coding the “hand” movement took a lot of trial and error. We took advantage of functions in order to simplify our code. Because the motion of the arrow arm and blinking of the LEDs is repeated for each activity, the code is very repetitive. We used a few LEDs on a breadboard to test our code. Below is part of our code including the functions we used.


At the end of the week, we showed Professor Gleason our original prototype as well as the demo circuit and code we had finished by that point. She seemed happy with the changes we had made based on the feedback she gave us and approved of the other changes we chose to make.

Demo Circuit

 

Week 4:

During the last week working on our project we put all of the physical elements together in order to build the final product. We cut the clock face, hand, and panel for the button and potentiometers out of wood and we spent a lot of time cutting and soldering the LED strips and putting them onto the clock face. We attached the breadboard, battery pack, and arduino onto the back of the clock. Using tips from the adafruit website for the button and LEDs and Amy’s Arduino packet for the potentiometers and servo, we wired everything to the arduino.

 

Final Product

Back Of Clock

Circuit

Overall I was pleased with the final iteration of our project. There were many times throughout the course of the last few weeks that I was unsure if we would be able to finish it, and although there are things that could be improved, I am happy with what we were able to accomplish. One thing I would have liked to fix is the burnt out LEDs. While soldering our LED strips, some of them were damaged and although we tried to test them before attaching them to our clock, it was difficult to keep track of them all and some damaged ones ended up being used. In order to avoid damaging more by attempting to replace the broken ones, we did not try to do so. If done again, I would have liked to figure out a better way to solder the LED strips together and attach them to the clock without damaging them in the process.

One feature that we had discussed, but did not end up implementing was adding velcro to the back of the activity pictures to allow the activities to be easily switched or for new ones to be added. We mentioned this idea to Professor Gleason and she liked it, so in a future iteration, I would include this idea.

Timing the arrow to move to the next activity over the course of the total amount of time (5,7, or 10 minutes) rather than the amount of time used for the demo (3, 5, or 7 seconds) is another thing I would like to have done. Replacing our continuous servo with one that rotates 270 degrees would be one alternative to the trial and error process to write the final code that would have been both time consuming and likely produced inconsistent results, but the hand would need to rotate counter-clockwise to get back to the first activity, which would not be ideal.

This project was a great way to sum up this course for me. While working on it, I realized the large scope of things we had learned and was able to take these things and add to them fairly easily thanks to the solid base we developed. Going through the entire process, from pitching an initial idea to the class, to presenting our final project to the CSC, was really satisfying, and the failures we faced during this project, and in general throughout the semester, were great learning experiences.

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One Comment
  1. I really like your project, i think it is really cool!!! I really like how you can adjust the time allotted for warning and transition time. I agree with you in regards to adding the velcro to the back of the pictures

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