User:SuperBlobMonster/Room Access Part 2

Future project prefferences
1.Plexy

2.Music

3.Laser

4.or a combination of the three while continuing to polish access... that works too...

Objectives
- Beautify- Condense the system and make it more marketable/presentable.

- Add security- Incorporate a raspberry pi and webcam to monitor who enters and exits the room

1. Debug- Improve upon the current system

2. Create tutorial from current documentation

Tutorial link here

Current problem
Fred the door opener would not work for me Friday night 10/11/13 between 9:30pm-9:50pm.

What's known:

From taking sketchy pictures under the door of the engineering room, I learned that

1. The hardware is in-tact from first glance

2. The system is powered to some extent. IE the timer circuit did not shut off prematurely

Solution
It turns out the problem was in fact very simple, and is actually visible in one of the pictures above.

One of the wires driving the motor had simply broken off. Re-soldered the connection and it worked just fine again.

Debugging
I polished up the debugging software I used to get the software into a functioning state, so that others trying to use my works can have better means of figuring out what's wrong.

Feedback from the program is an essential step to figuring out what was wrong. The program in it's current state can tell me quite a bit about what is going on:

1- The 'loudness' of a given knock 2- The reason for rejection if the knock is wrong 3- The spacing of your knocks, and the spacing of the expected knocks 4- Where in the code the arduino has reached

Final arduino code here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1OsOJBwUeWMNi1QNWZQekpIRW8/edit?usp=sharing

Box
I am trying to create a box that encloses the motor assembly, and have come up with a good design that:

- Holds the assembly out from the door - Protects the motor from being bumped - is removable and installable without taking off the mechanism

I laboriously created the objects in Google Sketchup and loaded them into makerware

But when I went to slice them, All sorts of errors occurred!

Speculation
I have tried compiling and saving the objects with a TON of other programs to try and sort out the problems, but it all has been to no avail! Same/similar slicing anomalies every time.

I believe the problem lays in the orientation of the triangles an STL file is made up of. Makerware thinks that the inside of the triangles is facing the outside on certain faces, and tries connecting and filling points that should in actuality remain hollow or vise verse

Maker bot shenanigans
While the maker bot was taken apart, I replaced the lever that keeps pressure on the filament feed. The old one was printed poorly, and I preemptively printed a new one knowing that it would brake down at some point.

I have no idea what is going on with the giant ball of filament, or the blob of solid PLA, but I don't like it. I left it on the table as an example of what goes wrong, and as a point of inquiry for later.

Other than that, it's just the usual maintenance, replacing the tape, leveling the build plate, cleaning up, exct...

Presentation
Most of my week was getting prepared for presenting to the engineering seminar.

A lot of it was very last minute, I thought I had it nailed down fairly well the week prior, but when it came time to go over it and make revisions, turned out that there was a lot of re-ordering and editing to be done.

It all came down to the Thursday in which were to present, in which I edited the revisions in the morning, sent it out by mid day while at work, took off early to review with class mates and make final adjustments, rehearsing all the way to the seminar, and present.

Considering all the calamity and last minute scrambling, I felt it went very well. Only wish I had a video of the presentation to critique myself

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1OsOJBwUeWMeUNyTlY3a1dJZUk/edit?usp=drive_web -Not preview-able, but downloadable

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t108NdeuqfU&feature=youtu.be -Dialog-less video demonstrating the mechanism

Where from here?
Gotta keep moving! now that the seminar presentation is over, I feel like relaxing... Can't relax just yet! lot's more to do!

1. Tutorial. Gotta start making a solid tutorial for the access project -speaking of tutorials, I gotta re-do and merge my maker bot tutorial with 1sfoerster's

2. Makerware compiling problems for fred's box

3. Coordinate editing the project page, get it up to speed with the project.

4. Design and make a paper to sit in front of maker bot with basic instructions and link to a page with pro-tips (quick easy project for Monday)

Egan is working on neatening the design, Hassan is working on refining the documentation.

EDITING. Lots of editing.
The majority of my week's work can be shown at the pages below

/makerbot tutorial pages/

/power sander page/

Makerbot stuffs
Tried seeing if either of the pvc glue's would melt the pla and be a good bonding agent

Conclusion: neither of the glue's work... it takes a fairly caustic chemical to melt this stuff... might ask the science department for some for a vapor smoothing chamber in the future

Week 4
ya, you can ignore this stuff anyways... my wiki points are maxed, and I mostly just put a ton of time into learning 3D editing software... how to fix broken objects with netfab, how to fix shells in meshlab and how to use sculptris