Japan Surge: Week of 5/22 Hackaday Log By: Rishi, Arnav, and Kasen

Monday:

Arnav:

 Worked on the code to make buttons work on the 4x4 matrix. Arnav was able to figure out the code and the problem seemed to be that the buffers were not in tune with the ports and this meant that the files from the sd card were not properly pairing with the arduino uno thus causing a blockage between the arduino uno and the sd card. Once the buffers were in tune with the ports on the arduino uno, audio was successfully playing out of the speakers. We had to watch multiple different youtube videos to come to our solution on how to link up the buffers with the speaker outputs. 

Kasen:

Our project was due the very next week so Kasen checked Basecamp, Hackaday, code, and project resources for any missed information. He went through the rubric multiple times to make sure that all components of our project were functional and wouldn’t have any last second errors that we had to stress about. Kasen noticed that our basecamp entries for our project were a bit unorganized so he spent the rest of the class period organizing our basecamp entries into their respective sections so we were ready to present it. 

(Have finished all the logs thanks to Kasen:)

Rishi:

On Monday Rishi got to school a bit early so that he could work on tracing our board in silhouette studio. This took multiple attempts because the braille wouldn’t trace correctly as it was a small dot but the problem was that Rishi was tracing in a relatively small font which would cross over with the other components of the board. Rishi increased the size of the braille which gave him a bigger field of view and allowed him to be more precise with the dots that he was making. The braille translator that we used was often giving us the wrong braille translations however the website was sometimes giving us the wrong output so we used a different braille translator which gave us the correct output. We linked the correct braille translator in our hackaday components. He then continued working on the easel inventables. Rishi had shown Mr. Woodbridge but the teacher had given him very helpful feedback that made the board turn out really well.

Link for amazing braille translator:translator:https://wecapable.com/braille-translator/english-to-braille-converter/

Tuesday:

Arnav: Arnav had done the step by step design process. In this he had outlined what websites he used to start the code. He also described the code in great detail by showing where the 4x4 matrix occurred in the code and teaching how the code works. He is working on the code and got one button to properly function. Arnav finished up the build design process and updated our May 8th log so that it correlated with everything we did that week including finalizing the CAD as well as fixing up getting our project ready for presentation day.

Kasen: Kasen had done the pictures on basecamp and hackaday. He had taken pictures of the machinery and the code. He also had finished organizing basecamp. He put in all the hackaday links for the project. He also put pictures of onshape, which is where we mapped out our idea of how the board will look like. Kasen also put the pictures for the updated draft dimensions for the playground communication board. However, as always there seems to be a problem showing up every day. Our wires had gotten unplugged in the box! Kasen carefully looked at our code and our pictures to rewire everything.

Rishi: Rishi had done the step by step tutorial on how to construct a playground communication board on hackaday. He put detailed information and pictures on how to accomplish it. Rishi had also put the final touches on the mission statement and our purpose for this project. He also had finished the easel inventables and had corrected the feedback given by his teacher, Mr.Woodbridge.

Wednesday:

Arnav: On Wednesday, Arnav and Rishi learned from our teacher on how to correctly clamp down our board for the CNC milling. However, before this step we had to clean up the CNC milling so we used a vacuum to clean up the CNC miller. There was also another issue on this day where our code where we didn’t save our audio files! This was really frustrating however Arnav realized that he had backups for the audio files and they were saved in the file section and they were saved on the drive. 

Rishi: We clamped the board down. This took a lot of time because we are not used to the CNC mill clamps. After the clamps were put on the board, it started to CNC mill. I, then, worked on brainstorming ideas for what the trifold should look like. I did that by putting all my information and pictures in one doc. I then put the information and pictures in canva for the correct font. I later printed everything out so we could glue. 

Kasen: Kasen worked on the basecamp. He put in all the updated code we have done so far. He also added more pictures for the step-by-step design tutorial we had in basecamp. He also added information of what we have done for the week of the 15th , by adding information and pictures. Kasen, then, made a detailed description of what the board will look like in basecamp under the doc called, “Communication Board Basecamp”

Thursday:

Kasen:

On Thursday Kasen worked on measuring and cutting the rest of the steel for the board. He used a ruler to see the exact dimensions of the length and width of the square hole. He then drew on the steel the size of the square hole but added 1 cm to the length and height of the hole drawn on the steel. He tried to cut the steel using the tin-snips but was not able to, so he left it to Rishi and Arnav. He later taped up the buttons on the board using gaff tape.

Rishi: Rishi started the day by putting all the information and pictures onto one word document for our trifold for our presentation, which is on May 31st. On the board Rishi will talk about: Our purpose, components, what our project is, and who the project is for. He also started measuring the length and width of the square so we can cut out metal (steel) pieces custom-made for the hole using tin-snips.

Arnav: Arnav scraped off the shredded bits of filament from the CNC mill, stuck between the words, braille. This process was very time consuming and took about 30 min. Then Arnav started cutting out the steel squares that had been measured. Arnav got 3 cuts due to it being a very physically challenging task.

Friday:

Arnav:

On Friday Arnav worked on smoothing out the edges using a  faux bone to smooth out all of the edges so that the touch actuators would fit inside of the square with ease. Smoothing out the edges was realized through a mistake where we tried to wedge the actuator through the sharp CNC milled squares and it scraped the edges of our board and left a very bad texture on the sides of our board. Arnav spent the rest of class individually smoothing out all of the edges for our board. 

Kasen: Kasen also started drawing on the steel to create button outlines for the button touch adapter. This involved measuring the length and width of the board holes with a ruler and using a Sharpie to cut out even squares for our touch adapters. Then proceed to complete half of the measurement process.

Rishi: I started printing and gluing the pieces onto the board. I have gotten the title, what a communication board is, who the communication is for, the components, and the purpose. We also added a QR code for our hackaday which provides great detail on all the steps to do the project by yourself.