Week 13

This is my 13th week at Fab Academy. This week we had the midterm break and met with our local and global instructors for reviewing what has been done so far and present them a schematic of our final project and the tasks to be completed. In the following I summarize what was discussed with them:

Review of the tasks done so far

I was up to date regarding the docummentation of all previous weeks, but I was unable to respond all the evaluations performed by my local and global instructors so far. Therefore, I commit to work on that.

Schematic of my final project

I presented the following schematic of my final project, which explains in an easy way what my idea is intended to do, what are the main components and how they interact with each other. Our global instructor stressed on the importance of having a clear picture of the data flow between the different devices, so I commited to work more on that in the upcoming weeks.

As seen on the picture, my proposed work is a fassade wall element which, by integrating some electronics, is capable of reducing energy consumption of dwellings by reducing cooling and heating needs. The idea is that when it is hot outside, the wall open the gates (as seen in the right side) to generate natural ventilation by air convection, whereas when it is cold outside, the gates are closed (left image) to take advantage from thermal insulation from static air as well as radiation heat thanks to glass/methacrylate finishes. The input devices necessary for my work are temperature and light sensors to know if it is cold/hot as well as if there is sun for providing energy. The output devices are the servos that allow for opening/closing the gates plus an OLED screen that serves for monitoring purposes, e.g. know temperature and moisture history or energy consumption estimations. Furthermore, I plan tu complement the energy provision for the microcontroller and all sensors by a solar cell and external battery, with in combination with sleep mode of the microcontroller it should allow for a very energy efficient system.

Tasks to be done

Regarding the planning of the tasks to be done I summarize in the following table what was presented:

As seen in the picture, I mostly have to upgrade my PCB for letting it having stronger servos. In my case I want to open gates made of methacrylate with servos, which is not a lightweight task, therefore my PCB needs to be updated to feed the servos with 5V instead of 3.3V. Furthermore, I need to find specific servos that can do that task, so I need to look for specific hardware. After that, I still need refine some details such as system integration of all electronics, and soldering and testing. To finally complete my work and proceed to prepare for the presentation.