Design and document the system integration for your final project

1. System Overview

Creating a prototype from scratch is often far more challenging than it first appears.
It's not just about building something tangible, it's about the balance between creativity, practicality and design.
Once we define clearly the problem, we gather materials and tools and build the first version that will expose
unforeseen problems. The project integrates mechanical movement and embedded electronics to achieve is purpose.
The machine will sort de bottlecaps by color and store them on especifics containers acording to their colors.

The First Version made of MDF looked like that and was funcional.

As you can see, design wasn't there and I had to rethink the machine.

The second version made of acrilic was more esthetic but we could still see the wires.



For the 3rd prototype I integrated:

* XIAO RP2040 microcontroller
* Color sensor TCS3725
* Servo motor
* Stepper motor
* Push button switch
* Limit switch
* 3D printed body structure
* Lasercutted acrilic
* Embedded programming logic

Here you can download the PCB design.



The 3D version shows where the components are distributed on the PCB
Servo Motor, Stepper Motor, Color Sensor and limit switch will be conected by wires to the PCB.

2. System Logic

The interaction sequence follows this logic:

The flowchart shows the complete operational sequence of the machine. Once powered and switched on,
the servo motor brings a cap to the color sensor after being read, the stepper motor moves the slider
to the correct container and the servo motor pushes the caps through a hole to fell onto the slider
and the container. Then the servo motors goes back to pick up another cap and so on.

3. Mechanical and structural Integration

The structure is mostly 3D Printed with just 2 acrilics of 5mm lasercutted.



The drawers are the internal bins where the caps will fall into and not on external containers.



For the wires to be the more invisible, I designed a spider to hold them.



Thinking about the packaging I thought of making a machine that could be assambled easily and
made some bricks that will old the structure together without any screw.


This is how it will look finished.