12. Group Assignment

This week's brief: Group assignment:

design a machine that includes mechanism+actuation+automation+application - build the mechanical parts and operate it manually

actuate and automate your machine

Individual assignment:
document the group project and your individual contribution

document the group project and your individual contribution

GROUP ASSIGNMENT
You can view our group assignment here!

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT

Brainstorming and Project planning

We started to brainstorm for project ideas on day 1. We all were on the same page to add a fun element to the machine to make it more intresting to work on. I suggested if we could think of machines for play such as arcade games. We put together some ideas but eventually had to scrap them due to time constraints and difficulty of acheiveing the gameplay.Finally by the end of day 2 we could all agree on making an automated light painting plotter machine. I helped to write downn all the ideas on the board and we assigned each one of us tasks to be completed. We decided to name it Velichapppadu.

I was given the duty of helping in the design of the system, Making the PCB for the LED mount, creating the presentation slide and shooting and helping with the editing of the presentation video.

System Design

Making the PCB and mount of the LEDs

My role was to make the PCB for the LED with an ESP32C6 microcontroller. For making the Led mount we needed the LED and the microcontroller to be battery poweered so i had to figure ot the power consumption of the led and the ESP32C6.

At its brightest level one neopixel consumes 60mA.
therefore 7 neopixels consumes : 7 x 60m A = 420mA

to find the battery consumption:
battery consumption =current x time it is left on
i.e. 420mA x 2 Hrs = 840mA

The ESP32C6 works on 3.7V

We decided to use 2 500mA 3.7 V lithium batteries that will be sufficient for our project.

Then i moved on to kiCad to start the schematic drawing of the components.

Now to place the multiple LEDs on the board a orientaion had to be decided. I thought of placing the LEDs in a "Y" shape. This was done by assuming that as the number of Leds in each row lights up the 'brushstroke' of the light will be thicker.

Routing was done next, after aligning the components with the imported sketch.

The compenents were collected and i started the soldering process.

After soldering the SMD components the connectors required for the battery and the ESP32C6 was placed on the board and sldered.

For the Battery

Since we had 2 batteries, It needed to be wired parallel to each other. So the positive terminal wire of one battery is soldered on to the positive terminal of the other battery. similary the negative terminals are also connected.

The wires then had to be crimped and a connector had to be attached to its ends so that it can be attached to the JST connector.

The wire soldered on to the battery had to be connected to the JST connected similarly.

PCB was ready to be tested. A dummy code was uploaded to the Microcontroller and the switch was turned on. In the beginning the leds worked fine.

But as soon as we moved the PCB around we found out that there was loose connection somwhere as the leds weren't working properly. Through debugging process it was found that there was a loose contact in one of the battery connections. So i had to rewire and make the connectors again.

Once that was done and tested again one of the Leds was not working so we had to replace it . For some reason it did not work again so we checked the continuity of the circuit with a multimeter. There wasn not any issues with the circuit we went on to replace the LED again.This time it worked properly.

The code was uploaded to the chip and the rows of lights could be controlled according to the user input.

Branding and Logo

I prepared a logo for the name of our machine to be used for light painting, UI and presentations

The idea of the logo is a firefly making a light trail in the shape of a 'V' which follows the working of the machine.

an outline of a firefly was created and then the path of the V was adjusted and merged with the firefly.

I made the typography of the logo using Illustrator and converted the text into paths (create outlines)

The logo and the typography was then exported as SVGs to be used for various purposes.

Presentation Slide

I was assigned to make the presentation slide for our project.

First of all i edited a rendered picture of the machine to show the the logo being drawn by the machine

SVGs of the typography was imported to place as the title. A brief description of the machine was also added.

I also wanted to highlight the main features of the machine - the wireless LED Module, the core XY mechanism and the custom UI.

The various results of the light painting done by the machine is also shown to showcase the capability of the machine.

Graphics for Light Painting

I had to make a few graphics that would be used to make the light trails. They needed to be converted into SVGs to be imported into the UI .

Download files

Files for PCB of LED module

Logo

Sketches of the light trails