Assignment Requirement:

• Plan and sketch a potential final project

Learning Outcome:

• Communicate an initial project proposal

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Project Name: Smart Drawer

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Problem & Inspiration:

Inventory tracking is one of the main issues at most fab labs and makerspaces. At San3aTech (Fab Lab Egypt), it takes a lot of time and effort to re-arrange and organize components after each workshop or educational program. So, I am passionate about solving this problem and decreasing time and effort consumed every week, by designing and making a smart system (Smart Drawer) for maintaining components in an easy way and tracking inventory.

First, I searched Fab Academy Archive if a student made this before as a project/assignment and fortunately I found 3 potential projects as follows:

• Inventory Bot, made by Kohei Morimoto from FABLAB Kitakagaya Japan in 2017. The mechanism is based on core XY sytem which is attached on back of the cabinet. A shaft with servo motor is attached on the head which pushes out the desired drawer, when a person need any component he/she has to give two inputs to machine a name of component and no. of quantity after that if the component is available the core XZ system moves toward that box and push it out. The arduino is used to control the core XZ system which gets instruction from PC and act according to it.



• Wally, made by Kenzo Prada Abiko from AS220 FabAcademy in 2015. This project also designed to maintain the inventory for the specific projects. To interface with machine LCD is placed alongside buttons which are also fabricated, a person needs to input a number of project and the boxes which have component of those project lights up to mention them. After taking desired component a person need to enter the number of component he/she tooks. And inventory updated with respect to it.



• Smart Inventory System, made by Noor Ahmed from Khairpur FabAcademy in 2018. The user inputs the IP address in the browser, a list of items and their quantities will appear, user should select an item to add or remove and its quantity and then press locate, an RGB led will be blinking indicating the the box where the component located.

I checked all the steps and progess done at each project in order to discover the pros and cons of each one. I really loved the Smart Inventory System made by Noor Ahmed and it would be my initial start with further developments and features.

NOW! it is the time to plan and sketch for my project, taking into considearion the above 3 projects and try to have more features and improvements to make it more smart and user friendly.

Improvements that I will make:

• Design and fabricate a new cabinet with the parametric design concept to be able to have customised size for each lab.
• Replace the metal hinges with 3d printed ones.
  
  
• Add two methods for logging in, user and admin and specify responsibilities for each one.