da chess board!!

I made a supper awesome chess board. First I started by making the design for the board, but lost it so my teacher was nice and gave me his design, but I had to make 2 boards one for me and one for him because he let me use his design. to make the board I had to clamp it to the table, then I mixed the resin for the board. I pored the resin into the board then after it dried I used more resin to put a top coat on the board. I also made a light board to go under the chess board to make it light up. I also made pieces to play with using resin. To make the pieces i took a mold and pored resin into the mold when it was dry i took the pieces out and then it was finished. I still have to finish coding the light board but other than that it is finished and looks very cool. Thank you for you time :):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):).

Dyno for my car,

For this year, I have made a couple of projects. I am currently in the making of a Dyno for an RC car. First, a Dyno is a big machine that a car is placed on and strapped on. This machine measures your horsepower and N-m of Torque on a cool graph you can even see the RPM. I will be 3d printing the shell of the Dyno, then add an RPM reader and display it on a screen, I will probably finish it by next year.

Poker Chips

These are the red poker I made

Firstly to make this I had to do research about poker chips. I found out that each poker chip is 3.9 inches and there are 300 in a set. I also learned that there 100 white pieces and 50 of every other color. The other colors are red, blue, green, and black. The first step to making this was making 300, 3.9 inch circular chips with my dads initials on them with Corel. after that I laser cut the pieces and painted each one different colored resin. Lastly I spray painted the backs of each poker chip and then I was done. If I were to change anything I would have done resin on both sides.

Little Wooden Spoon

In makerspace this quarter, I have started to carve a spoon out of cedar. I chose a piece of wood that has a knot right in the middle of the bowl because it will look cool but unfortunately, that has made carving it out a bit of a struggle. Sometimes beauty is worth the pain. My spoon is very small, cute, and great. When cutting off excess wood, another spoon-shaped piece came off so I am going to make it into a more rustic spoon as well.

Equations: Using LaTeX

$$ A = \pi r^2 $$

to write equations like the one above use LaTeX formatting (LaTeX cheat sheet) with double dollar signs ($$) as delimiters. Thus the above equation would be:

$$ A = \pi r^2 $$

This is enabled using the MathJax-LaTeX plugin for WordPress.

A Better Clock

Almost everybody knows of Doctor Urbano’s LED clock in the Makerspace and how blasphemous it is. So I’ve made a better one. Boasting 60, not 72, but 60 top-of-the-line AliExpress LEDs (definitely not made in a sweatshop), this clock doesn’t skip around every few seconds.

Procedure

I cut out two layers of wood on the laser cutter, and then glued them together, I used a Pico W because I need wifi to find the current time so the clock is accurate. Then I soldered wires to the LED’s and hooked them up to the Pico, and stuck the LED’s unto the wood frame. After I got all of the hardware done, I began doing the software, with Doctor Urbano’s help of course. The point of this project was to incorporate arc lengths and arc angles into it. The way I did that was by using equations to find the arc lengths of each hand, Then I had it print each one of them out, in real time.

Results

A working Clock, prints real-time arc lengths

The coding was relatively tricky because Doc and I tried to use 2 different versions and after a lot of finicking, we used version 8 of the pico, also because I don’t know much of coding. I am not sure If I will take this home or leave it in the Makerspace.

Discussion

This is very much an improvement from the original because this one doesn’t skip an LED every few seconds since it has 60 LEDS instead of 72. There isn’t really anything In particular that went wrong or bad in making it, I did have to resolder the wire to the LEDS a couple times but that’s because it was my first time soldering and the wires immediately bent at a 90-degree angle so I had to solder it very good. If I did this again, I would probably be able to do it much faster and probably slightly better.

$$ Arclength = \frac{HandDegrees}{360}\cdot 2\pi r $$

Code Used:

import socketpool
import wifi

from adafruit_httpserver.mime_type import MIMEType
from adafruit_httpserver.request import HTTPRequest
from adafruit_httpserver.response import HTTPResponse
from adafruit_httpserver.server import HTTPServer
import adafruit_ntp

import board
import time
from ledPixelsPico import *
from uNetComm import *
from uSchedule import *
from ledClock import *
from math import pi


# brightness Knob
brightness = 1.0

#ssid, password = secrets.WIFI_SSID, secrets.WIFI_PASSWORD  # pylint: disable=no-member
ssid, password = "TFS Students", "Fultoneagles"  # pylint: disable=no-member

pool = uNetConnect(ssid, password)
server = HTTPServer(pool)
# get time
#ntp = adafruit_ntp.NTP(pool, tz_offset=0)
clock = ledClock(board.GP15, 60, pool, True)
clock.initTime()


print(f"Listening on http://{wifi.radio.ipv4_address}:80")
# Start the server.
server.start(str(wifi.radio.ipv4_address))
t_zero = time.monotonic()

while True:
    
    dt = time.monotonic() - t_zero
    if dt >= 1.0:
        t_zero = time.monotonic()
        dtime = time.monotonic() - clock.zeroTime
        clock.now = clock.startTime.addSecs(dtime)
        #print(dtime, clock.now)
        print(f"Time: {clock.now.hr}:{clock.now.min}:{clock.now.sec}")
        #clock.lightToTime(clock.now)
        r = 39.3
        h = clock.now.hr
        m = clock.now.min
        s = clock.now.sec
        n = int(60/12*h)
        print(h,n)
        for i in range (60):
            clock.pixels[i]=(0,0,0)
        for i in range(h*5):
            clock.pixels[i]=(20,0,20)
            
        clock.pixels[m-1] = (70,30,0)
        clock.pixels[s-1] = (0,100,0)
        clock.show()
        hdegrees = h*30
        mdegrees = m*6
        sdegrees = s*6

        harclength = hdegrees/360*2*pi*r
        marclength = mdegrees/360*2*pi*r
        sarclength = sdegrees/360*2*pi*r

        print("arclength hours=", harclength)
        print("arclength minutes=",marclength)
        print("arclength seconds=",sarclength)

LED Clock for Geometry Class

I made a clock run by a Raspberry Pi
It gets the current time over Wi-Fi and can print the arc length of the clock hands.

I cut the frame out of wood on the laser cutter (The frame is approximately 13.25cm in diameter), I used 60 LEDs from the 144 LED per meter strip.

I am using a Raspberry Pi Pico W to program the LEDs, the code is a modified version of the code on Doc’s GitHub. It gets the current time over Wi-Fi and tracks the time with an internal clock, sets the LEDs to simulate the clock’s hands, and prints the arc length for the seconds, minutes, and hours hands.

$$ ArcLength= 2 \pi r \cdot \frac{HandDegrees}{ 360 } $$

Doc’s original code is bad because it is specifically made for the clock he made, where there is only 59 LEDs instead of 60, so it has to jump around and skip seconds to stay accurate, also, his LED strip is counter-clockwise, so you have to figure out how to reverse his code.


import socketpool
import wifi

from adafruit_httpserver.mime_type import MIMEType
from adafruit_httpserver.request import HTTPRequest
from adafruit_httpserver.response import HTTPResponse
from adafruit_httpserver.server import HTTPServer
import adafruit_ntp

import board
import time
from ledPixelsPico import *
from uNetComm import *
from uSchedule import *
from ledClock import *
from math import pi


# brightness Knob
brightness = 1.0

#ssid, password = secrets.WIFI_SSID, secrets.WIFI_PASSWORD  # pylint: disable=no-member
ssid, password = "TFS Students", "Fultoneagles"  # pylint: disable=no-member

pool = uNetConnect(ssid, password)
server = HTTPServer(pool)
# get time
#ntp = adafruit_ntp.NTP(pool, tz_offset=0)
clock = ledClock(board.GP27, 60, pool, True)
clock.initTime()


print(f"Listening on http://{wifi.radio.ipv4_address}:80")
# Start the server.
server.start(str(wifi.radio.ipv4_address))
t_zero = time.monotonic()

while True:
    dt = time.monotonic() - t_zero
    if dt >= 1.0:
        t_zero = time.monotonic()
        dtime = time.monotonic() - clock.zeroTime
        clock.now = clock.startTime.addSecs(dtime)
        #print(dtime, clock.now)
        print(f"Time: {clock.now.hr}:{clock.now.min}:{clock.now.sec}")
        #clock.lightToTime(clock.now)
        r = (((100 / 144) * 60) / pi) / 2
        h = clock.now.hr
        m = clock.now.min
        s = clock.now.sec
        for i in range (60):
            clock.pixels[i]=(0,0,0)
        for i in range(m):
            clock.pixels[i]=(0,10,30)
            
        clock.pixels[h*5] = (100,0,0)
        clock.pixels[s-1] = (0,255,0)
        clock.show()
        hdegrees = h*30
        mdegrees = m*6
        sdegrees = s*6

        harclength = hdegrees/360*2*pi*r
        marclength = mdegrees/360*2*pi*r
        sarclength = sdegrees/360*2*pi*r

        print("arclength hours=", harclength)
        print("arclength minutes=",marclength)
        print("arclength seconds=",sarclength)

Wooden Starry Night

I first started off making a galaxy drawing on procreate and then laser printed it on a wooden plank and colored it with colored pencils. I then realized it looked like “Starry Night”.

Yarn kite

I made this yarn kite because I needed something to do and it was easy. I did it a long time ago at art camp so I knew how. You can make some pretty intricate ones, this one is simple though.

Terrariums

In Mackerspace, I have been experimenting with the minimal necessities and best ways to create a self-sustaining terrarium. I am using three different types of moss and experimenting with drainage. The six combinations I am trying are:

  • Java moss+ABG
  • Java moss+ABG+false bottom
  • Polytrichales+ABG
  • Polytrichales+ABG+false bottom
  • Pin cushion moss+ABG
  • Pin cushion moss+ABG+false bottom

The moss I am using takes a long time to die even if it isn’t properly sustained so after almost one month I have no results.

Day one
Day three
Day six
Day twenty-five