Week 11 Update
This week was a scramble to have everything on the board and completed. This incorporated final soldering of all inputs from the controller, final printing of every piece, and permanent bonding of 3D printed material to the acrylic. We also worked on making the stand for each third of the diorama, as well as the information on the laminated supplemental material that will accompany it.
As of this week, all input components have been soldered onto the perf boards, including the slider which we fried last week. Below you can see how they are all integrated together, including the grouping of variable output signal wires that are sent from the controller box to the microcontroller behind the acrylic.
Below is a photo grid consisting of the development process for integrating everything together. It shows the process of bonding the subsystems to the acrylic, which was done using super glue and applied pressure to the board. We also tested every electronics subsystem together one more time, with the input signals coming from the soldered components on the controller perf boards. You can also see, in the fourth photo, 3D printed stands custom made to hold up each section. These are accompanied by back braces that act as buttresses to support the rear of each tryptic. Lastly, you can see each section with the final prints laid out in their final position, ready for permanent gluing.
Some of the final prints were then glued onto the acrylic, as you can see below:
Here are the final prints for the Radiators, greenhouse, and one half of the water recycling and electrolysis. The other half is pictured in the final photograph, being assembled on the 3D printer.
WEEK 10 UPDATE
WEEK 9 UPDATE
This week Cassidy and I did a lot of integration and wiring work, the next essential step on our march to complete Lumina Station. Last week we met in person to compile a list of all of the wires and pins that were going to be needed in our current design, and this week we continued along that trend by measuring out discrete lengths of wire for specific parts. This helped us organize the back of the superstructure, and gave us a better sense of how we were going to wrangle together every piece. After that was done, we started soldering and wiring specific pieces together. This is the final assembly of these pieces individually, the next step for them is to actually place them in the superstructure and have them fixed into place.
Speaking of the superstructure, we now finally have ours laser cut with each individual output node etched into it. We went to McGuckin's and purchased three thin sheets of black plexiglass that Cassidy laser cut later in the week. We also had our controller box laser cut, and we tested out the fittings of different buttons and input objects within it. They all fit, so we began soldering them into place on perfboards, and measured out lengths of wire between the box itself and the rest of the structure.
We also worked hard on integrating every aspect of both of our code together. I gave Cassidy an extra Arduino MEGA, so that we could both work in tandem on the programs. I was able to get all of the code I worked on integrated together, but there were some issues with how I set up timing. Cassidy has told me that she was able to get everything hooked up and working together, so now we just have to combine our two programs into one, and our initial codebase will be complete.
Unfortunately, I did not take many photos or videos over the past week, and the pieces that we worked on are in Cassidy's possession. I will edit this page and include those update media after this upcoming Wednesday (10/28)
Week 8 Update
Cassidy and I got a lot of work done this week, and really put forward a couple of steps that laid out exactly what we need to accomplish moving forward. To start, we met in person this weekend, so that we could place all of the parts that we had printed into their rough orientation. This helped us figure out exactly what needed to be resized, as well as informed us of where in the acrylic superstructure we needed to laser cut holes for pins. Additionally, we made a list of all of the Pins and Pin types that we were including. This informed us of exactly how many PWM, digital, and analog pins we would need. It helped lead us to the conclusion of using an Arduino MEGA instead of multiple trinkets, as this would make the interaction between modules much easier. Below you can see some photos of us going through this process
All parts at Cassidy's House
3D Printed Parts beginning to be organized
All the completed parts in their rough final layout
All parts in the layout, with Cassidy's cardboard diorama and the digital blocked layout to help us place them
I also included some more work and demonstrations of the Arduino code I have written. Below is the code and videos of the Greenhouse, and Water Recycling and Electrolysis systems working. There needs to be some more work done on these to squash small bugs, but they should be trivial and I am happy with how they are working as of now.
