User:Amotaher9224/ENES 100/Project 2: Bicycle turn signal continued

Week4 Narrative
After we eliminated the OEM cover that had the red reflector, we were focused on making the Lego matrix better. The diameter of a LED is 5mm, however the diameter in the Lego holes are 4.5mm, so we used a drill to sand out the inside edges of the lego pieces, so its enough to fi the LED. We also decided we will put 3x LED on each panel, and we have 6 panels, so all together will be using 18 basic 5mm red/ or multicolor LEDs for this device.

Our next step was to fit the LEDs into the holes. We pushed the LEDs into the holes after it had been sanded out. However we needed extended wires to run the wires from the LED to the Arduino. We connected a positive and negative wire to each LED and solder them smoothly to have a good connection. We also put shrink-wrap on the base of each LED so we have insulation. After we soldered and shrink-wrapped each LEDs, we grouped the LEDs into 3 sections, a left signal, a middle section and right section. We added all of the positive and negative for each sections, so now we have 3 really big LEDs. We plan to set each of the section to a designated pin in the Arduino, which will controlled by the code. Our code will include specific tasks for each pin and it will control the LED. Now we have to finalize the wiring and final placement of the LEDs

Week5 Narrative
During this week we decided to work more on the wiring formations and programs used to control the LEDs. First we went though different ideas for new types of wiring because our initial design wouldn't fit in our housing very well. We had two new ideas, the first was to connect all the negative wires together and solder one wire to them. Then, our design wouldn't need 36 wires to connect into the arduino, we would only need 6. Our second design was to strip a wire down completely and solder all the negative and positive prongs to one wire, then dip it in a rubber coating to prevent short circuiting.

The first idea seemed to work really well we just had trouble with soldering that many wires together without some fusing to each other so were going to need to make all new wires for this new design. Our second idea seemed to work well in theory but once we tried it we realized it was going to be a lot of work to connect all the wires that way and the wires would be on the side our prototype but we needed them to be in the center for them to connect to the arduino and fit in the housing.

Next week we will be testing which type of switch we will use to control the LEDs and the code to run the switch. Also, we will hopefully be getting our new LEDs that are multicolored and will be able to put together something that is almost ready to put on a bicycle.