Weekly Projects | Matt Pearsonmpearson at mcds dot org | Matt Pearson

Week 1 - Project Management

Fri, 31 Jan 2014 20:57:29 -0800

Hello World!

San Rafael, California

This is my first entry and it took some time to get here! This project takes me into rich curricular design in an environment of K-8 students and teachers which has ongoing remixing of disciplines, materials and tools. Some call it transdisciplinary learning, others call it project based learning, still others call it inquiry based learning, surely it is all of those blended with the principles of Design Thinking in a classroom where failing rapidly and with low cost is the single most important objective.

I hope to evolve this web space through my learning and found it appropriate to start with "Hello World!" Mercurial, our primary tool for exchanging data with our primary server hosting this web space, is straightforward for the most part. My laptop admin account would not cooperate and when I created a fresh admin account on the laptop, followed the tutorials, corrected some tutorial typos I was pulling, updating, etc. in under five minutes. Fortunately, my journey took hours of tinkering and diving down many a rabbit hole to uncover the inner workings of Mercurial, the Bash shell, SSH to name a few. I learned many new tools and dusted off my aging UNIX command line skills. I have had a myriad of emails and calls with my mentor all to great learning success! The problem lied on my Mac OSX Lion installation and the permissions, which are still not allowing me to function in the Mercurial environment in my main account, having issues with private and public keys. I continue to try new things and come up with ideas, but that rabbit hole, which I find interesting, must wait. For, in the spirit of pressing onward in this project and in this class we must leave behind some rabbit holes to allow the learning to progress in other areas. Rainy days will come and the rabbit hole will be opened again in the future.

Week 2 - CAD

Thu, 30 Jan 2014 20:57:29 -0800

A busy week to be sure! I am working with a team of two others at the Richmond, CA Fab Lab. This Fab Lab is not there yet and is being brought online as we take the course. We have a temporary electronics bay setup in a portable outside of the main facility which is being setup as well.

I plan on doing more frequent updates, so first some catch up. We have learned how to use a tool called Mercurial to check in and out files in a repository system. This system allows us to work collaboratively while also giving us version control.

I spent some time with project management software and plan to upload details in the Final Project section. The tool I landed on, at least at spending some more time, is called OpenProj. I will update some gannt charts as I learn the tool.

I have been spending some time with the tool I am using to create this site called: Sandvox. It is a very simple and intuitive tool that allows a low learning curve for site design, but depth when desired. I plan on keeping my design slim and nimble. No fancy themes where possible and movies and other renderings offsite.

Week 3 - Computer Controlled Cutting

Wed, 29 Jan 2014 17:57:29 -0800

"Design, make and document a 'press-fit construction kit"

The press fit construction kit is taking shape. Not having ready access to a laser cutter makes things difficult. Iterative design is more my style and I will be enabled in that realm tomorrow when we have 2 two-hour sessions at the TechShop with the laser cutter. This morning at a coffee shop some napkin design happened, you need to always be ready to capture inspiration OR little moments of time left to dream.

I realize now, that I left out the flex holes at the base of each slot on the triangle vertices. As it turns out, the slot was quite a bit thicker to accommodate the corrugated cardboard used. I used Inkscape to develop the design from the napkin and then imported into Adobe Illustrator (AI).

I wanted to make sure the design came up in AI before I started the Laser cutter time at the TechShop. We only get two hours on the cutter and I didn't want to spend it on the initial design. As it turns out, Inkscape is useable, but AI seems more robust. I am new to both tools and feel I should have started in a CAD program and then brought it over to AI. I was able to clone parts for the parametric build, but my design is built off of geometric shapes that should be much easier to specify and input. I started the download and install of the Fab Mod tools and hope to explore those in future weeks.

Week 4 - Electronics Production

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 07:43:52 -0800

For this week we will learn how to fabricate a printed circuit board (PCB) to make a tool used in the programming of micro controllers. This tool is called FabISP. The fabrication of a PCB can be done several ways and I will be using a Roland Modela CNC to mill a PCB "blank."

Unfortunately, access to the equipment is not possible since our lab is in the midst of being created. The lab is in a portable at Kennedy High School in Richmond, CA, and the school is closed for break. Our team of three FabLabers have setup a time with our mentor to go over this week's lesson the following week.

I will continue this entry next week. So that time is not lost, I have moved ahead to week 5 and 3D printing and scanning. You can check that out in the Week 5 entry.

To be continued…

2/28/2014
Yesterday Fab Lab Instructor Mercedes Mane visited us at the temporary Richmond, CA Fab Lab for some much needed instruction for this weeks lesson. We each completed our own FabISP which will be used in future projects.

Week 5 - 3d Scanning and Printing

Fri, 24 Jan 2014 08:34:11 -0800

This week's material was done during Week 4. Access to resources were not available for Week 4 and you can check that post for more info.

For this week we are tasked with 3D printing a small object that could not be made subtractively as well as 3D scanning an object to make it into a 3D model.

3D Printing
3D printing is called an additive modeling technique unlike a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine that uses subtractive modeling. In additive modeling the machine, or artist, adds material to the model to build it up. In subtractive modeling the machine, or artist, subtracts e.g. carves material away from a mass of material.

In review of subtractive modelers, I needed to come up with something where a milling bit (on left) could not access a surface to mill it. Making something hollow seemed without challenge. Making something static also seemed without challenge.

Building off of Week 3 and the theme of toys and puzzles, I have designed a puzzle that can only be made through additive modeling. To be clear, you could assemble the puzzle from parts that were created subtractively, but this puzzle is created in one 3D print and has moving parts. I call it Hells Balls. The puzzle is constructed out of a double helix that is then copied and inverted below itself. This construct creates a cage for the puzzle balls to operate in. The balls will be printed inside the cage. It would probably be sufficent to create just the two double helices, but I wanted to have something fun to engage with, not just look at.

Week 6 -- Electronics Design

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 17:28:32 -0800

This week...

This week we have been assigned to tweak the design of the Hello-World board by adding an input and an output. We will then use this board to learn how to program in week 8.

To do this we need to learn the following:

How to use the Eagle PCB Design Software. This software allows us to create and mill printed circuit boards (PCB). We will use this to add components and recreate the trace routes on the board.
How to take the output Eagle file and use Gimp (or another paint program) to prepare a cut file for the board.
How to use the Fab Modules, and a little bit of Linux command line and Ubuntu, to create the path files to mill the traces.
Send the path file from the Fab Module to the Modela milling machine to machine a blank copper board.
Once we get the board it is time to load it up and solder in the surface mount components.

My learning begins...

The Eagle software has a straightforward GUI and for me is intuitive. The interface updates two different displays: schematic and board layout. The schematic view is an easier to design interface since you can label and do virtual connections. Each electrical connection that needs to be made from one point to another will need to have a physical path to follow on the board which is displayed in the boad layout view. The board layout is what gets milled on the Modela.

I decided to keep things simple since this is my first exposure to all of these tools. I added a button (input) and an LED (output). Here is my final schematic followed by the board layout:

After starting the soldering, we realized we do not have the correct resonator and have ordered the part: ECS-CR2-20.00-B-TR. Available at Digikey here. When this part arrives we will add it to our board and I will upload a picture of the finished board. Below you will find my raw step-by-step for taking the file to the Fab Module and milling with the Modela. Below tha are some pictures of failure and an attempt to hand mill. While I did get a workable "Frankenstein" board, I decided to remill the board. The first time around we did not invert the cut file to have it properly cut the board.

Week 7 - Computer Controlled Machining

Wed, 22 Jan 2014 13:03:00 -0800

Make Something Big!

This week we were charged with making something big. Big being a relative term, I decided to interpret that as the size of a piece of furniture. I will make some bar stools on the ShopBot. The ShopBot (at right) is as big as a small car and likes to work with sheets of plywood or similar dimensioned material. I first had to schedule a 3 hour class at the TechShop to use the tool. This was tough, but finally found a class in San Jose, CA (2 hours away). I decided to book the ShopBot for right after the class in San Jose, since the SF TechShop was tied up until early April. I guess Silicon valley likes working with small stuff and not big stuff, the ShopBot there is wide open for scheduling!

The work flow for my design is as follows:

Come up with a low resolution prototype in a tool I am familiar with: I sketched it on paper. Low resolution means, very little of my time from concept to version 0.01 of the idea.
Now that I have the idea, formalize it a bit more and do some research on stools. What are the standard heights etc. These stools need to fit under a bar height counter. What is bar height, what is the height of a bar stool etc.
Search for examples. ShopBot's website has some great designs to serve as examples. My design was created by taking an existing design and tweaking it to my needs. This design was tweaked using ShopBot's software PartWorks directly. Partworks is a very straightforward tool which is used to take a design and create the path files necessary for the ShopBot to make it's cuts. The design could have been created in many tools including Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator, AutoDesk Inventor, etc.

ShopBot's Partworks Software in Action

Partworks is a fairly intuitive tool and with the mouse over help I was well on my way. The creation of the paths was a click away. I resized the stools to take into account the thickness of the plywood and also increased their height and changed their edge look a bit.

Week 8 - Embedded Programming

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 08:30:13 -0800

Program the Hello World Board from Week 6
(and read the data sheet for the ATtiny44)

In this weeks video conference with the world we learned about the steps necessary to program a micro controller. I also learned some bad news, some good news and later some quite enlightening elements of micro controllers.

The Bad News…
I would not be allowed to buy an Arduino and program it for use in my final project. I am planning on a visual artistic representation of live environmental phenomena: Photo voltaic electricity generation, UV index, humidity, temperature, time, ambient pressure, and possibly ambient sound via decibels.

The Good News…
I would be allowed to build from scratch an Arduino and program it for use in my final project. Is this good news?

The Enlightening Learning…
This will play out more below in the steps I took to program the Hello World board. However, by diving into the white paper, playing with the Eagle software to design a board, and having learned how to fabricate the actual PCB, I have decided I do not need an Arduino. I will not make an Arduino. I will make a board that is far simpler and directly catered to my final project. Simpler, more efficient, costs less, and to be integrated into the visual artistic expression, not hidden in a box.

Week 9 - Molding and Casting

Sun, 19 Jan 2014 09:39:42 -0800

"Design a 3D mold, machine it, and cast parts from it"

Well ok then! Steps 1 and 2 were done with Tinkercad and the 2Bot respectively. I cover Tinkercad during week 5 and 3D printing here. The 2Bot is a neat milling machine for Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), higher density foams, machinst wax and I am doing research with mushroom foam.

Tinkercad and the 3D mold

The 2Bot uses a tray that suspends the material in two tension clamps held right and left. It defines the Z top by calculating the middle of the clamps less one half of the height of the material. Not an ideal situation as no "bit drop" z calibration is available. I am sure this is to keep things simple, but results in errors. It does allow you to flip the material for two sided cutting as well as scaling the model to any size you want by calculating the material needed. This is all done in software. All path calcs are also done in software.

The model machined really well, but I left it a bit tight on the bottom. You can also notice all the little "hairs" hanging off of everything. This was done at a resolution of 0.01" with a 1/8" bit. I am uncertain how the 2Bot will handle a different bit as it is a unique design.

Week 10 - Input Devices

Sat, 18 Jan 2014 13:55:09 -0800

"Measure something: add a sensor to a microcontroller board that you've designed and read it."

This particular week's assignment was extremely challenging. The FABisp worked only once out of dozens and dozens attempts with the Hello World button and LED in Week 8. I suspected I had issues. Yes, I did! Try as I might, I could not issolate the fabled -1 error with AVRdude. This particular error coudl be due to all sorts of issues:

Soldering errors
Component selection errors
Traces gone awry or peeled off
Cables miss wired or plugged in backwards
Bad ISP
Computer setup and drivers

On and on the list went with no clarity other than to check and recheck everything. I redid boards over and over to no avail. I have very limited access to the lab and the Modela to mill boards, so when I go in there I tend to mill a bunch. In the beginning I had errors in milling and had to wait a week to get back in to the lab. Now, I am quite good at milling and designing the boards. I have made so many of the Hello boards I found it hard to continue with no joy. Yes, I got good at the soldering and the milling, but I just wanted the lights to blink and the sensors to work!

Week 11 - Composites

Fri, 17 Jan 2014 22:55:24 -0800

"Design and make a 3D mold about a square foot, and produce a fiber composite part in it."

I am in catch up mode as I missed a week to be with 7th grade students in the Mojave desert. This week's project is being done in conjunction with the Week 9 mold making project and is well suited to being done together!

I again designed with Tinkercad online to create a bowl mold on the 2Bot milling machine. Below is a picture of the bowl mold covered in plastic wrap ready to have the resin and fabric applied.

I am using 3M Automotive repair fiberglass resin along with some polyester cloth that I made into strips. The goal is create something that is a composite and hopefully ends up being stronger than the individual parts.

Once I cut the strips and had them ready, I mixed the resin and the hardener together and started applying with a brush. The plastic was not cooperative so I poured the resin slowly over the top and used the brush to coath the dome shape that would become a bowl. I then layed the strips of polyester across and they quickly soaked up the resin.

Week 12 - Output Devices

Thu, 16 Jan 2014 08:13:15 -0800

"Add an output device to a microcontroller board you've designed and program it to do something."

This week's assignment is happening during week 13 with several assignments. I was finally able to isolate the problem with the programming workflow which ended up being a computer USB 3.0 issue. I was unable to determine the precise error so cannot say conclusively that it is USB, but did try it on identical computer builds with no joy and then tried it on an older USB 2.0 machine with joy.

On to the assignment…

I spent a great deal of time milling boards and setting up a Fabduino board. As I develop my programming skills the Arduino IDE seems a good entry point. I am also exploring Modkit for developing code. I am looking at this simpler IDEs because I would like to bring this to grades 6-8 in the US. I have played with both of these interfaces with students with moderate success.

The Fabduino board will be documented on a separate entry on this site. There are tons of resources for the development of this board and they are all great save for one or two simple parts to their documentation. I will try to compile these into one reference both for myself and future students. I'm not sure my students will actually develop these boards and will probably simply use Arduino Unos or their equivalent. This is on hold since I need the resonator which is not in inventory. I placed an order with Digikey and it just arrived yesterday.

Week 13 - Networking

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:10:50 -0800

Design and build a wired &/or wireless network connecting at least two nodes…

For this week I am building a wired serial network using the Hello bridge board and two Hello node boards.

Work flow

Download hello.bus.45.bridge.png traces and interior cutout and mill 2 bridge boards. We need only one bridge board, but I want a spare since the Modela time is very hard to come by.
Download hello.bus.45.bridge.png traces and interior cutout and mill 4 node boards. We will use two nodes and have spares.
Populate one bridge board and two node boards and solder them up.
Connect the boards like as shown here, note that the number "2" labeled board is the FAB ISP. Both the FTDI cable and the FABISP cable are plugged into the same Mac.
F
Flash the boards using this C code file and Makefile.
1. The default C code is set to have the node ID as 0. The bridge board is technically a node and it can be flashed with the C code unchanged. The subsequent node boards need to have that ID incremented by 1. So we will have Node 0=bridge board, node 1=node board 1, node 2 = node board 2. The C code can be edited in a simple text editor and this is what needs to be changed:
2. The populated Node boards:
4. The node boards will get their power from the bridge board since there is no FTDI header. You will need to delete the .hex and .out file created after each flash then edit the file to change the node and program the next node. Connect your nodes one at a time as in this picture and use your FAB ISP to flash.
5. Now you can check your coding and see if everything was done correctly. If not double check your traces and make sure you edited the file correctly. It is a good idea to label the Node boards with a sharpie underneath so you can keep track of the nodes.
It is now time to check to see if things work.
1. Connect the bridge board to your computer via the FTDI cable and connect the boards together with a cable you make like this:
2. Open an Arduino IDE and change the port to the FTDI com port. This is most likely the top most port. If you get an error change the port.
3. Open the serial monitor from the tools menu and bottom right make sure the baud rate is set to 9600.
4. You can now attempt to communicate to the nodes. Type a 1 in and hit enter to send the text to the bridge board. The bridge board will alert the network and all nodes should blink their LED one time followed by a quick blink of the node you selected. You should also get a node identifier message in the serial monitor e.g. type 1 and hit enter results in Node 1 displayed in the serial monitor and each node blinking once followed with the Node 1 blinking again. The default delay is set to 100ms so it is a quick blink. Below is a video of this in action.

What I learned

My soldering is becoming much more detailed and thorough. I was able to put together three boards, including picking components, pretty quickly. I checked my solders with a magnifyer glass and had no errors. I also played with the C code and changed the delay and saw how easy it would be to create an interface to interact with a node that had something other than an LED connected.

What I would do differently

I would mill the boards with more complex outputs and perhaps daisy chain some boards off the nodes to carry out independent actions.

Week 14 - Mechanical Design of Final Project

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 16:03:34 -0800

"Do the mechanical design for your final project."

I have changed the final project to something that is more fun and something that incorporates more of the skills I have learned in this course. It has become known simply as MagMaze.

What I did
I decided I wanted to do something fun. I wanted to do a game. In review of input and output possibilities, programming environments I am familiar with, and a desire to use as many new skills as possible, I landed on the Magnet Maze. This fully functional prototype acts as a play and puzzle surface wher you navigate a user constructed maze with a steel ball pulled, pushed, and bounced.

What is the Magnet Maze?
The Magnet Maze allows the player to control the X/Y position of an electromagnet via joystick in a 300mmX 300mmX150mm enclosed box: Game Box. The magnet moves with varying speed based on the joystick input under a plastic insect netting stretched over the box. On the top of this netting rests a 1/2" polished steel ball suspended via the netting 1" above the electro magnet. Above the ball is a clear plexiglass 300mm X 300mm X 150mm partial box (Puzzle Grid) that rests on the Game Box. This Puzzle Grid has holes 1/4" holes drilled every 15mm in X and Y to allow the user to insert puzzle pieces suspended under the clear plexiglass top. The player can create any maze by pulling the Puzzle Grid off the Game Box and inserting a variety of puzzle pieces to create many different kinds of mazes and obstacles that include walls, holes, jumps, poles, and magnet hazards.

Week 15 - Interface Applications

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 16:25:15 -0800

"Write an application that interfaces with an input &/or output device."

I decided to use the Arduino IDE and fabricate a Fabduino to control the stepper motors, analog joystick, limit switches, electromagnet and anything else that was needed. I control the stepper motors with a Stepper Motor Driver v3.3 off an old Makerbot (version 1).

The Fabduino development from Week 10:

The Stepper Motor Driver v3.3 board. There are many to choose from, including a Fab version. However, this one was free and ready to go. It is also very configurable.

Using the Arduino IDE I coded the following to control the motors:

//Magnetic Sphere Sphere Game

//This uses a dual potentiometer joystick to control two stepper motors in X and Y axis

//Need to add limit switches

//declare pins for X axis

int potPin = 1;

int Step_X = 13;

int Dir_X = 12;

int Enable_X = 8;

//declare pins for Y axis

int potPin2 = 2;

int Step_Y2 = 11;

int Dir_Y2 = 10;

int Enable_Y2 = 7;

//declare values

int Speed_X = 0; //step speed (delay between steps)

Week 16 - Applications & Implications

Sun, 12 Jan 2014 19:37:17 -0800

I have changed the final project to something that is more fun and something that incorporates more of the skills I have learned in this course. It has become known simply as MagMaze.

What is the MagMaze?
The Magnet Maze allows the player to control the X/Y position of an electromagnet via joystick in a 300mmX 300mmX150mm enclosed box: Game Box. The magnet moves with varying speed based on the joystick input under a plastic insect netting stretched over the box. On the top of this netting rests a 1/2" polished steel ball suspended via the netting 1" above the electro magnet. Above the ball is a clear plexiglass 300mm X 300mm X 150mm partial box (Puzzle Grid) that rests on the Game Box. This Puzzle Grid has holes 1/4" holes drilled every 15mm in X and Y to allow the user to insert puzzle pieces suspended under the clear plexiglass top. The player can create any maze by pulling the Puzzle Grid off the Game Box and inserting a variety of puzzle pieces to create many different kinds of mazes and obstacles that include walls, holes, jumps, poles, and magnet hazards.

Week 17 - Invention, Intellectual Property and income

Sat, 11 Jan 2014 22:17:53 -0800

"Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project."

Dissemination Plan

Goal
The primary goal for this project is to remove the veil of how things work for young students. This is best done by making it easy to see how things work and make it into something fun and engaging. Our primary entry point for this exposure will be a summer camp for rising 4th grade students called WonderLab. This camp creates a diverse group of students from two very different school populations. This camp is steeped in making, building, and tinkering all with an eye toward the Next Generation Science standards they will be exposed to in the 4th grade.

Objectives
To release this on Instructables, leverage a GPL, so that other teachers can make the fun instructional aid in the Fall of 2014.

Users
The target market are K-8 students and their teachers. However, this could be used in any classroom and even replicated in other building sets.

Content
The camp, and subsequent connections with other teachers, will iterate how the game can be used in novel and unique ways in both classrooms and afterschool programs.

Week 18 - Project Development

Fri, 10 Jan 2014 22:19:12 -0800

"Complete your final project, tracking your progress."

What tasks have been completed?

Completed AND Not Completed

[Completed] Game Box
1. The Game Box is constructed out 15mmX15mmX1000mm extruded aluminum stock from a company called Openbeam. The owner is great and helped me setup a classroom right after his kickstarter campaign. The Openbeam stock is connected using his "T" and "L" fittings and standard 3mm hardware. The box has VEX rails to serve as tracks for the steel rods which serve as the X and Y axises. The vex also uses the same connecting bolts.
[Completed]Puzzle Grid
1. The puzzle grid is a five sided box made with Openbeam stock and hardware with Lexan. The Lexan is mounted in the grooves of the Openbeam stock. The Lexan has holes driled at 20mm intervals to form a grid that will accept the insertion of puzzle pieces which extend under the top of the Lexan going toward the plastic netting. This allows the user to change the obstacles for a variety of challenges.
[Completed] Stepper control bar linkage boxes (qty 2)
1. These boxes serve as the connector between the stepper motor drive shafts and drive shaft nut and the steel rods for both X and Y. These are custom designs and 3d printed in PLA. The X and Y boxes are not identical due to spacing in tracks.
  1. Cube workflow:
    1. Design part and export as .STL file.
    2. Open Cubify design software and import file.
    3. jClick the "heal" button on the software.
    4. Under settings: set to PLA, set to medium density for Cube 2, set to no rafts or supports
    5. Click on "Upload" button to export and save t thumb drive
2. X and Y axis linkage boxes
  1. V0.2 X axis linkage box on Thingiverse here.
  2. V0.2 Y axis linkage box on Thingiverse here.
  3. [UPDATE] Due to the nature of the blocks and linkages interferring with chassis connecting hardware, the stepper control plate had slides instead of holes designed into the plate so the plate can slide up and down to tune the linkage blocks.
[Completed] Magnet central mount: This box connects the two steel rods and serves as a mounting point for the electro magnet. This also allows the use of bearings to hold the steel rods. Part on Thingiverse.
[Completed] Rod pillow block: this connects on the opposite end of the guide rod to keep it level across the Game Box. Part on Thingiverse.

[Completed] Stepper motor mounting plate
1. A component is available from Openbeam to mount NEMA17 stepper motors. However, the design did not quite meet my specification for mounting the motors in a hybrid Openbeam and VEX infrastructure. I designed custom plates and printed them out on a Cubify 3D printer. The printing ended up taking quite a bit of time as I attempted to make a new 3d printer operational (The Buccaneer by Pirate 3D), but it would not even load filament out of the box. The Cube 1 is a fairly solid printer that is dependable…usually. We will see if the PLA plates will hold up.
  1. Cube settings
    1. Print 1 set with raft enabled and at medium (strong) density.
    2. Probably need to remove the raft since this is a flat piece and added thickness.
2. These should probably be machined out aluminum plate for strength. The Shapeoko just arrived and is 6-8 hours of build time. Time that is not currently available to meet deadlines.
3. Nema 17 stepper motor mounting plate V0.2 available on Thingiverse here.

[Completed] Fabduino - I used a Fabduino and the Arduino IDE to control the motors, switches, and magnet.
[In progress] Add limit switches to restrict range of motion

What has worked and What has not worked?

Moved through three versions of the stepper mounting plate. V0.3 is current build being used.
The mounting plate made of PLA is working very well and seems strong enough.
The control rods tend to bind up some times making it tough to control
The code is working great! The control linkages printed on the 3D printer have very nice tolerances and are holding up great.
The inverted puzzle grid needs to be cut with a CNC to be very precise and the pieces do not stay in place at the moment.

What questions need to be resolved?

How do I get a magnetic embedded ball to levitate?
What code is needed to control this?
What sensors do I use to sense the fields and adjust the magnets?

What skills learned in the course were used to accomplish this:
Electronics production: Fabduino is the central control for user input via an analog joystick to output on two NEMA 17 stepper motors

Electronics production: Eagle, FAB ISP to burn the bootloader onto the Fabduino
Programming with the Arduino IDE and Text editor
Inputs: Analog joystick with incoporated switch, LEDs
Outputs: Stepper motors
CAD design: intial design using paper and pencil and then AI and TinkerCad for multiple areas
3D printing: the X and Y axis control rods connecting to the Stepper screw rods requires a custom part
Laser cutter: design of case and control mounting board (not in prototype, future enhancement)

What have I learned?

How to code with the Arduino IDE.
How to fabricate boards
How to bring multiple devices together in harmony with a user interface
How to manage time
How to plan for the unexpected by having multiple pathways to success.