Tri State Area

This is a key chain that I made from fancy wood that I got from Dr. Urbano. First, I took the Japanese character from Google and outlined traced it. Then I overlapped the traced image over the original and shaped it to match the original (because it was slightly off from the outline). Then, I took off the access material using the sander. This part took a little time because I had to eyeball the thickness and try to make a perfect circle around the character.

For the metal piece on top I used a screw thing I found in the laser/vinyl cutting room. I then drilled a hole through it using the drill press. I had to put the metal screw in a clamp and then firmly hold it on the drill press plate. I drilled the hole with a very small drill pit for a pilot hole and then I used a larger one.

For this project the main things I did were help design and build the actual structure of the hydroponics tower and code the programs that run the pumps and the LEDs that run with them. I spent the majority of the time making multiple different programs that all do slightly different things with the pumps. One program runs the pumps on a daily cycle while the other makes it so you can turn the pumps on for a specified duration from a local website of the command line. I did not set up the website but I created the python program that ran the action communicated for the website.

The LED program went pretty well. I thought it was a lot of fun to make the LEDs dance up and down the strip. I spent a lot of time (probably too much) trying to make the LED colors make a cool pattern while it pumped. Running the pumps themselves also went pretty well.

The list of things that did not go well is actually shorter than expected. The main problems were little errors in the code that would take a long time to sniff out. The only one of those that is still a problem at the moment is one that makes all the lights go bright white after a keyboard interrupt or other error. We couldn’t figure out what was causing this and it doesn’t actually mess any of the core functions up so we are leaving it for now.

I learned a lot about python and the job specific functions that we needed to use but the more important things I learned were just the broader skills involved with a big project like this. The first was how quick I have gotten with the basic commands in terminal. I’m sure this will apply to other programing projects in the future and I feel like I’ve become much more proficient with it. The other thing was how good I got at looking up styling and other things online to the point where I was able to teach myself a lot of concepts. This pretty much tears down any boundaries that exist because I can now teach myself most things I will need to know for future projects.

I probably would’ve tried to spend more time trying to solve my problems instead of waiting for the teacher to help me everytime. Early on in the project, anytime my code gave my an error message I would just get annoyed and wait for my teacher to help me fix it. As it went on, I got better at fixing my errors by inspecting my code and by googling syntax for the language I was using. Even though I still needed my teacher for some things, I was able to solve most of my problems on my own.

For this project I created a fully functional hydroponics system with the ability to connect and control the pumps from your device.

The hydroponics system has a lot of advantages over the traditional greenhouse. Some advantages are the sturdiness of the frame, accessibility of the raspberry pi, the simplicity of the website, and the functionality of the entire system.

I believe that the coding that went into this project went more or less smoothly. I can confidently look at most of the code and have the ability to explain what is happening and how to tell when it is working or not. I am very confident in running each program and being able to recognize when it is functioning properly or not.

There were a couple of things that I personally struggled with during this project. One of which was trying to get the pump time to function properly with the server.py file. I definitely could not have done it without Dr. Urbano’s help.

I have learned a lot more about how the html, javascrpit, and the server works together.

I would probably focus more on the aesthetics of the website. Although it is functioning it is not pretty to look at. It is literally the bare bones and could use some styling.

I spent all of the fall and winter working on this project. I decided to created a hang board, which is used for rock climbing training. It is a piece of wood with different depths in it that you hang from and it trains your finger strength. I first cut the length of the piece of wood I wanted to use. I then began to design the depths of the slots for the CNC machine to cut out. I started my design on Corel and then moved it to the Easel program so I could then add the depth of the slots, this took a few weeks. I then was ready for the CNC machine to make the cuts. This took 2 months to cut in total. I ran into very many problems with the CNC machine and kept having to adjust my settings and start the cuts over. The CNC machine also doesn’t cut very fast. At the beginning of this project I was thinking this would take a week or two at max, but I was very wrong. This was a project full of trail and errors and figuring out the best way to do things.

I was asked to learn how to use the embroidery machine. I said I was up for the challenge. It took me about a week to really understand it, but I still have a bunch to learn about it. If anyone wants to learn, come talk to me. I am more than happy to teach you.

This is a flower patch that I made. It took about an hour but it turned out amazing.

I spent this quarter making two different things: a wooden sign thing with some designs and words on it for my sister’s graduation, a continuation of last quarter, and an epoxy birthday present. The epoxy thing is the picture below.

This is the robot that Jace and I made for robotics class. I split the time spent on this project between Makerspace and Robotics. We did most of the coding and stuff involving software during Robotics and did most of the actually building and assembling during Makerspace. The main piece of equipment we used was the laser cutter.

We started by building the main frame to fit a grand piano. It is such a perfect fit that is actually holds the entire frame above the piano from just friction. After we had a large frame, we printed a box that had 8 holes in the exact spacing needed to cover an octave on a piano. We then attached the box to the frame so it spans a C octave. Once we had this frame, we could experiment with the servos a ton and figure out what length of arm makes the best servo attachment to push down the key with the speed and power to create a normal sound. This involved printing tons of small arms and attaching them to servos temporarily to test and then repeating. Once we had the proper specs we were able to start coding some songs into the Arduino.

I think this project went well overall. We had some trouble coding good songs onto it because of the limited ports on the Arduino. We started with “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and managed to get it to play almost the entire song. There are still many things that I would like to do with this project. It is easy to copy and make a few more boxes on different parts of the piano in order to do more complicated songs. We could also use a different type of computer with more ports in order to make more notes be able to go at once and play chords or something like that. I’m happy with how it turned out and I think we will be able to add some cool things to it in the future.

In this project I am working on a keycap. A keycap is the top part of a key on a keyboard. Mine specifically is used on a mechanical keyboard. Originally, the I ordered the supplies for creating the mold which didn’t work out later on.

The first attempt I used a two part silicon solution to create the mold of the actual keycap from the keyboard. This required the bottom and the top of the keycap. With the mold of the bottom part completed, I attempted to create a clay sculpture on top. Then poured the epoxy with the clay sculpture in it upside-down. Once the resin hardened, I took apart the mold.

The challenge for the first attempt was not being able to re-use the mold multiple times very well and the time it took to create a new one is very time consuming.

To overcome this I ordered molds online which worked very well and where larger than the usual sized keycaps which made for a clearer keycap. Something that was very challenging with this, would be the bubbles in the epoxy. To remove the bubbles I would have to use a blow torch of some sort, which I didn’t have access to at the time.

I repeated this process a two times then attempted to make three keys at once. The results were bad because I messed up the two-part solution and the epoxy wasn’t able to harden and is still liquid to this day.

This semester I don’t have a 3D printed product yet, but I have learned some basic graphics usage. square(size = [x, y], center = true/false);

Scale([x/100, y/100, z/100]) circle(x); //

circle(x, $fn = ); //

d: the diameter of the circle

$fa: the smallest angle of each shard

$fs: the minimum length of each division of the long term upper limit

$fn: the fixed number of slices in the entire 360 degrees

circle($fn = x, $fa = y, $fs = z, r );

resize(newsize=[x,y,z]) sphere(r);

rotate([a, b, c]) { … };

translate(v = [x, y, z]) { … }

v(); // mirror([x,y,z]) hand();