Final Project Part II: Prototyping Week 1

Initial prototype

sketches of initial prototype

We started off week two with this prototype and with the idea of having a long tube hold the marbles from the top and then empty out into a clear container that will have dividers. The container at the bottom would rotate every time an activity ended. We initially planned to use a weight sensor to sense the weight of each marble and write a program that converts the number of marbles into the number of minutes an activity was but then we realized we could also use a color sensor to sense when a new activity was. The color sensor was more than $40 though which would nearly be our whole budget. With more thinking, we realized that we could probably just use a light sensor to sense when a marble was in the tube or not. This then led us to change our long tube on the top plan and instead have separate tubes for each activity.







So we thought of two ways the tubes on the top and bottom of the machine would be. One would be to have the two layers attached by beams so that when one moved, the other would be pulled along. We also thought of them going opposite directions and they'd be attached separately to a different motor.

We then had to figure out where we we wanted to place the light sensor. We couldn't place it on top of the tubes looking down since it would sense the machine underneath the tube.  We decided that having the sensor below the tube might work well. But the light sensor could not be right underneath the tube because of its shape so we thought of positioning it a little to the side and make steps for the marbles to roll down on to the light sensor and then the releasing mechanism.




























We also thought of perhaps placing the light sensor horizontally to the side but still underneath the tubes so that it would sense when the tube has been empty of marbles, the tubes above would shift one over so that the next tube could be emptied. The tubes on the top would be standing on top of a platform so that the marbles would be held inside of the tubes but once the tubes shifted to the space above the marble releasing part, the marbles would be able to drop down on the releasing mechanism.














 And then Jennifer wrote out a plan of how our code will be.




















So this week, we were finally able to finalize our material orders to the 6 foot long clear PVC pipe and a bag of marbles. We will also need three motors, an arduino, and bricktronics shield for the the mechanism that shifts the tubes. Next week, we plan on tailoring the marble releasing mechanism to the marbles we ordered, build the mechanism that shifts the tubes, and write up the code.