Project Logs

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• Electronics Heavy Week!

  Pat Mutia • 2 days ago • 0 comments

  Pat has been soldering connectors to the LED strips and connections between the LED rings. She has also been testing them by connecting each individual component to the breadboard. She also soldered connections onto a new button with a different tactile feel because the pins do not fit the normal PWM crimped connectors.

  Currently, we have an issue with battery or the WAGO wire connectors. Pat has been testing a simple case of using the battery to power a single LED strip of 21 individual LEDS, but it has not worked although working on the breadboard. Pat talked to Kevin, and he suggested that the connections within the WAGO gates are not connecting properly, so we have switched from raw wire connections to the crimped connections and exposed approximately 10mm of the battery barrel jack wires. We also charged the battery to ensure it wasn't the issue either. However, the LEDs are still not lighting, so we are awaiting an answer for now..

  We eventually want to not have to connect the Pi Pico to Pat's laptop, so should we be powering the Pi Pico with a battery? Will it not run code without power?

  After this simple case is resolved, we can connect the rest of the LEDs! Pat and Kevin did the math, and our battery can approximately power 70 LEDs at full brightness. Currently, we approximately have 100 or more LEDs. So, we need to scale down the brightness with a scalar somewhere in the code to have about 2/3 of full brightness. The LEDs are extremely bright and look very cool B).

  Ale has been printing more of the ribs, the top fin, and started designing the head with the jaw and trigger handle. She also redesigned the hex core holder. 

  We are debating what servo motor to use to open the jaw because each piece has been around a pound or half a pound, so we are not sure if two micro-servo motors can carry that load or whether we should use a single bigger servo.

  NOW WE MUST PRACTICE CDR SLIDES!

• Slow Midterms Week

  Pat Mutia • 7 days ago • 0 comments

  Ale starting assembling and taping the parts together and CADed a ring for mounting some of the parts together. She also printed an example gear mechanism to connect to the servo for the jaw of the shark for Pat to experiment with. Pat implemented a circling pattern for the ring alternatively to the breathing pattern but needs to experiment with syncing up chained LED rings.
  
  We went to the lab to start soldering the components together and got connectors for the battery. Pat needs to work on soldering the entire circuit with the battery together. Ale must work on CADing the shark head with the jaw and trigger handle.

  Things are coming together! We will update with more photos to come. 

• Late Night with the Lights

  Pat Mutia • 02/08/2025 at 09:46 • 1 comment

  Got many new items! RFC tags! Knowledge on powering many components with the battery! More LED rings! Micro servo motor!
  

  After a busy day at the Techhub... Ale was able to obtain an open printer!! So, more parts are coming along.

  Pat worked on whether the RFID detects the RFC tag in parallel to the LEDs "breathing." This site was very helpful: RFID Reader Module. Problems to notice here are that the RED/no Hexcore mode is choppy in fading in and out because it takes longer to get the request from RFID when no RFC tag is present. We also want the transition to be smooth from RED to BLUE (i.e. when all the LEDs are off, switch the colors).

  VIDEO 1

  We realized that we were requesting the RFID to detect the presence of a RFC tag too often, therefore causing the choppy transitions. We only need to check the presence of the RFID within the period of fading in/fading out, which is approximately a 2-second period. Therefore, that allowed less interruptions to the LED brightness changes, leading to smoother transitions. Also, Pat added the changes to the LEDs' colors to occur in a stack (LIFO), so the changes would occur when the conditions of all the LEDs being off and the length of the list of colors being greater than 2 (indicating a need to switch) were fulfilled. Therefore, we get this:
  

  VIDEO 2

  Next things to work on: more 3D-printing, servo-gear jaw mechanism, and soldering power connections to the battery. Time to sleep...

• LED Ring and Button

  Pat Mutia • 02/07/2025 at 19:43 • 0 comments

  LED Ring works! Now both LED strip and ring are passively breathing.

  Thank you to this website: https://electrocredible.com/neopixel-micropython-raspberry-pi-pico-ws2812b/
  

  Can easily add a button now.

• More CAD and... LEDS!!

  Pat Mutia • 02/07/2025 at 19:07 • 0 comments

  Ale worked on creating CAD models for the top of the shark aka the Fin and Fin Holder. These parts are supposed to look similar to the 3D model. They are currently being 3D printed. We will continue working towards the head. Today, we will be printing an open close gear mechanism that will work with a servo to begin the jaw motion.

  CAD Images:

  Pat started working on LEDs and got help from Kevin on the Neopixel class. They tested out different methods for getting a "breathing" pattern on the LEDs, where it was more direct versus using a sine function. Then we set up a conditional to set up the structure for detecting the Hexcore. Pat is now playing with the LED ring and seeing if they can run both LEDS at the same time and separately. We also got our Li-Ion battery, so we need to see how to use that. 
  
  During our meeting today, we must ask about the NFC tags and how we can get longer wires. Also, we want to ask for a different colored button.

• PRINTED 65% OF FISH BONES

  Pat Mutia • 01/31/2025 at 23:26 • 0 comments

  PDR completed! We also made our hackaday.io page!

  Ale completed more CAD of device (approximately 65% of the entire design). The next few parts are more complex because it involves the head, articulating mouth, and trigger handle. We've been printing every single day for this week. Pat got their 3D-printing certification on Monday at the Techhub but can't get into the Techhub or Caltech Hall.

  We purchased the double-sided mounting tape for connecting our pieces. We need to test out whether we have enough clearance to place the tape or if it strong enough to hold the pieces. We may need to print out additional L brackets or rings to fix into the design. This will let us mount each individual piece to each other because the inside of each part is hollow.

  Pat needs to complete the circuitry for the LED strips/rings and inquire about the NFC tags to replace the ultrasonic sensor.

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