User:Kszostak2139/ENES 100/Project 2: Bicycle Turn Signal

Week1 Narrative
During this week our group decided to go with a bigger platform for our LED lay out. We determined that the factory OEM cover for the brake reflector that came with the bike might be hard to see with the few amount of LEDs that can fit inside the housing and the contrasting colors (i.e. red/greed). To make it easier to see the lights we made a new housing out of the lego pieces for robots for a temporary period of time until we order or print our housing that will hold the power source, LEDs and arduino.

Week2 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.

Week3 Narrative
This week we designed our housing for the LEDs, battery and arduino(s) and are drawing the program in sketchup so that hopefully we may print by next week. We are currently still waiting on the LEDs we ordered and cannot set up or next prototype without these next multicolored LEDs.

File:Specs for housing.JPG|Prototype twos dimensions for 3D printing

Week4 Narrative
For this week we decided to focus on getting a new prototype working for a presentation in the seminar since our first prototype is not functioning anymore from some tests we put on it after we initially got the lights blinking. One way we modified our first prototype was we tried to braid wires together so that there are less going into the arduino the other way we tried was stripping one wire and soldering all the wires to just one wire running across all the ends of the LEDs.

The new box we decided to use had spaces that would fit all our wires battery and arduino in the same spot. However, not many modifications were made from the first box to the second. We used a different type of wire that looked much nicer that our original wires. Also, our box is much more water resistant than our first design, it is also much stronger and can withstand a little more resistance for biking on back trails.

Over the weekend we finished installing everything in the box and getting the LEDs to blink for our coming presentation in the seminar class.