Final project ideas

The idea for my final project is not finalized, yet. However, I have a few ideas I'm considering.
below I'll list some of them with sketches (if available)

Idea 1

The goal of the project is to give the consumer a direct feedback on the amount of water he/she is using. This can be in the form of a device that can be hooked on the faucet to show exactly how many cubic meter (or Liters) this person has used.

Idea 2

Most people don't compress plastic water bottles before tossing them into the trash. This results in landfills that are mostly air.
the idea for the project is to make a motorized watter bottle compressor that can be used as a kitchen appliance with a display showing how much of the landfill volume has been spared

Idea 3

I have a problem organizing my and my wife's books in our home library. So I thought it might be cool to have an interactive library where you can scan a book's ISBN through an app and the app tells you where to shelf this book (the shelf would light up or sometihng). and then you can rertreive any book by searching for it in the same app and the shelf where the book is would light up.

Idea 4

This Idea came to me after week 10 of fabacademy. While I know it's pretty late to take on a new project and have it ready before the end of Fabacademy, I think it's an idea worth pursuing and it'll be better fitting than the perviously chosen idea (bottle crusher).

The idea is to make a device that will help strength coaches analyze the power of their atheletes. By using the speed and the vertical displacement of the barbell, the coach can get power analysis and compare the athlete's lifts.

Update 1

This week's assignment was to model the final projects ideas and here is what I managed to mode:

Idea 1:
Idea 1:

more details on these drawings can be found in Week 2. Note: These are just initial drawings. The designs will probably look completely different as we progress through the weeks.

Update 2

So I've decided to go forward with the bottle crusher. I think think this project will be fun to use and will help me learn more about motors, torque and force.

to-do

- I need to prepare a components list for the projects.
- update the CAD with the more realistic dimensions.

Update 3

I decided to go with brushed DC motors instead of servo motors. Thy're generally easier to drive and would bring the cost down. Also, we don't need the percision of stepper motors. DC motors can provide the necessecary torque required to rotate the lead screw to crush the water bottles.

More changes were introduced to the design. the lead screws would need couplings to connect them to the motor shafts. Also, the top of the lead screws would need ball bearings to prevent the lead screws from moving. This will keep me from adding rails and axial bearings to ensure smooth movement.

Obviously, there is a lot more to add to this design. I still need to add the buttons, PCB, motor drivers, and perhaps some LED indicators.
The list below is a general light of items I will need. I'll keep updating this list with more items and more details once the items are decided.

Component	Size	Qty
DC motors	-	2
lead screw	500mm long	2
Coupling	8mm	2
ball bearing	8mm	2
Motor drivers	TBD	1
LED	red and green	4
micro controller	TBD	1

Update 4:

So I decided to change my project idea and go with idea 4 (barbell power analyzer). I did some research and the implementation will be more complicated than I anticipated. However, I think I will overcome the obstacles that'll face me.
So tha main components will be:

IMU sensor (an accelerometer and gyroscope)
Data trasmitter
Data receiver on the laptop
code to analyze the data

This video shows a similar concept. I'm planning on taking this idea and implementing the same way of measurements in my project.

Update 5:

I made a quick design on how I intend the device to look like.

Here are the main components that will be required the PCB board:

The main idea here is to have the sensor send sampling points to a device (laptop) where a software or a sketch on the laptop can analyze all these points and do calculate the power output.
For the transceiver, i'm still looking for a good candidate as, I understand, some devices can't send this much data at once. Therefore, I'm currently exploring wifi or bluetooth devices.