Week 15 : System Integration

System integration week is all about our final project. We need to document the system integration of our final project along with designing the project to look like a finished product.

System Integration

The planning and system integration of this project has changed a bit from week 1 planning stages to now. I genuinely thought what I had designed in week 2 of CAD week was going to suffice as a base design for my final project. Past Vicky thought she was ahead of the game. “I created a base with a cavern space, when I would just plop in my pcb board, designed in week 6, and I would be good to go.” Boy was I wrong. It wouldn’t be a learning experience or a masterpiece without its iterations to get there.

Outputs

-I will be using a servo motor and an LED strip.

-The servo motor will be used as a carousel, if you will, to spin a three-sided earring stand. To get more milage out of the servo motor, I will be 3D printing gears to have the earring stand make full rotations even with a servo only turning 180 degrees. The gear on the servo will have 64 teeth, while the gear it will be interacting with, connected to the rotating part of the stand will have 16 teeth. With this ratio of 4:1 the stand will make two full rotations in one direction and then another two in the opposite direction when the servo returns to place.

-The LED strip will be used to light up the stand, with a duel purpose of providing sufficient lighting if it is dark out and to also place a spotlight/ highlight the earrings being showcased. The LED strip will be sandwiched in between two wooden decorative frame pieces that go around the rotating stand part.

Inputs

-I will be using a switch and a motion sensor.

-The switch will be a simple rocker switch to control the LED strip.

-The motion sensor is the main interface and intended interaction with the piece. The motion sensor will control the servo motor. The idea of this piece is to draw in more viewers. If people are walking in crowds from a distance, they might not even notice small items such as earrings. The idea is, the motion from the stand moving would be intriguing from a far and draw spectators closer in. If people are coming in for a closer look at earrings, I don’t want the display to be moving. So, when the motion sensor is triggered, the stand will stop rotating.

Board

While I had accounted for my two inputs and outputs in my original board, I did not account for the knowledge and information I had lack. Before purchasing all the components, in my ignorance I thought all components has three connections. Since then, I have designed a board to adjust for the aspects I had not considered.

-The LED strip has not one, but three signal connections. The LEDs are also 12v. I needed to add additional power as well as a buck board to control the voltage distribution to the LEDs and the microcontroller.