a wall that contains an assortment of words
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The Wall of Words™ is a playground tool for people that are non-verbal or are unable to communicate their needs through the means of conventional speech. It allows users to communicate sentences with a snap!
The board will use magnets and RFID readers to snap the words into sockets, and then read the words aloud to communicate with others. There will be around 34 words to be used in the five sockets to talk in simple sentences that anyone can understand.
The final week finally passed us by. In this log, I'll go over how we did at the forum and what we wanted to improve on in the end.
We are very disappointed with our grade and we would've wished for a higher one but I guess it accurately reflects how much effort we put in? We tried hard just to make it that far, but I suppose it's what we deserve.
In the forum, we had a lot of people seem interested in our project. We liked how we could try to explain it in different ways and see which way it proved more effective, eventually we came up with a solid pattern between us all to create a good presentation. I think people liked our project's goal even though we didn't have much to show, this boosted our morale.
Another thing we noticed at the forum was how much all the other classes did things too. And, even compared to them, we still seemed minuscule and almost pathetic. But, we didn't let that get our hopes down and we wrapped it up pretty well. I enjoyed the forum and I thought I learned a lot of valuable lessons from it overall.
After we finished the forum, we had time to wrap it all up with a reflection the day after. And just like that our project was done.
I think we learned a lot from this project and if I were to do it again I'd implement more variables of teamwork and maybe choose something within our capabilities next time.
- G.W.
Last week Friday, I forgot to cover our delivery day stats. I will go over them now.
Mr Woodbridge seemed underwhelmed as we really had not completed much. So we got a pretty low grade for that which bummed me out pretty bad. It brought my grade really far down and my prospects for a 4.0 GPA for this semester are plummeting which is unfortunate. But, enough talk about that.
We should start off with what we have next week Wednesday (I believe). We have our forum/presentation thing which is sort of like a science fair but to showcase our projects to anyone who's interested. So, we've been requested to work on a trifold board to present at this science fair situation. I've already began work on it and I'd say that I've been doing most of the work on it. Johnny bounces from Tristan to me periodically talking. Tristan is coding or something. I'm not sure what he's doing but I hope he's doing something.
I'd like to think that we didn't do so bad but looking around the classroom we're clearly the least prepared, the least finished, and we'll probably get the lowest grade because of that. I feel dragged down by my teammates but it's best we stay optimistic and keep going on.
Next week, we plan to add finishing touches to our trifold board and to the coding we have to do on our RFID readers. It should go hopefully well.
- G.W.
Links we used this week:
This week was a week full of attempted breakthroughs and realizations that we knew would come.
As we get closer and closer to delivery day and the presentations itself at the forum, we realized that more work should be split up evenly amongst ourselves. So, through the use of planning. We split up the project. I (Garrett) was to work on the OnShape board design to more of an extent, with Johnny periodically helping, and Tristan and Johnny's main priority was to work on the code and attempt to make a breakthrough.
Johnny and Tristan worked on the code, and in my day of absence asked if the teacher could help us. In response he stated we should look it up. So we did, again, and found nothing of help. This deeply discouraged us as we had no idea what to do and we felt as if we were left in the dark without fuel to burn our lanterns with. Lost at sea. Fortunately, we ditched the breadboard for good and went all the way back and retraced our steps at the basic RFID reader and Arduino port start. This seemed promising and we will see how it pans out for us as the days go on.
This week, I tinkered with OnShape until I learned the basics and then began 3D modelling a basic shape of the project. I had to channel my Tech Arts skills from 7th grade for this, and they didn't prove well for me and I was left with a terrible product.
So, what we learned through this was that times get hard, especially when left without help or expertise in the subject you're working with. But hopefully this story will have a happy ending and we'll be able to make it out of this unscathed and happy with our final designs.
(2nd photo is a basic shape I made in OnShape for practice)
This week we worked on designing the board in OnShape and recording words in a .mp3 recorder to make the words for the board.
The due date is soon, and we are (vastly) unprepared and probably will not get the points on the rubric that constitute finishing the project. However, we still believe that continuing to work on the project to the best of our capabilities will bring us closer to success.
I designed the board further in OnShape to hopefully be shown to Woodbridge by the end of the week. And Tristan James Maxfield and Johnny Arnav Moore worked on finding solutions to the issue of the code not being able to handle multiple RFID readers.
Overall, this week was underwhelming and the prospects for future progress are doubtful. However, there is always room for success and I think that eventually we will achieve our goals.
https://forum.arduino.cc/t/multiple-rfid-problem/671482 : Forum thread we used to refer and try to help fix our problem.
This week began not only the starts of a new piece of code (to helpfully allow for multiple RFID readers connected to the breadboard) but also designs started to be put into the works.
As Tristan and Johnny worked on the wiring and troubleshooting with the breadboard and the Arduino software, I put work into the main board prototype on the OnShape website after finalizing our pen-and-paper designs. Transferring these drawn out prototypes to the OnShape website will give us a clear sight ahead to see what we'll make.
This next week we plan on continuing what we are doing and hopefully making a breakthrough in the code to finally move the coding part of the project out of the way. This would have to be finding a way around completing the breadboard, as it just isn't working for us. Maybe in our final prototype we can just have one scanner -- just to have something to present on delivery day.
This week, we attempted to use multiple RFID readers on our breadboard. We experimented with multiple different techniques and approaches but none of them proved successful. We will either need help from Mr. Woodbridge soon or maybe the code we have in the works will prove correct and help us continue our project.
We really liked this video and it helped us understand how to connect the RFID scanner to the Arduino board.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WReFkfrUIk
We really like this video because I didn't know how to use a breadboard but we do now! Thanks to this video.
This week we learned how to utilize a breadboard to create a more efficient and organized way of wiring by watching a few YouTube tutorials. We also utilized help from articles and Mr. Woodbridge himself. We prototyped the project and began the work on the RFID scanner and the Arduino code, but we were unable to finish it this week. We included many drawings and found good measurements that would be ideal for the project.
The wiring we attached to the RFID scanner from the breadboard created a more compact and efficient way of organizing our project and building as a whole. We made a working RFID scanner mechanism and we only have to make a few more of them and we'll be finishing the board.
We are also believed to have made a breakthrough and our use of Basecamp has been up recently with the addition of Johnny being absent, so we uploaded the code and scripts to Basecamp.
We prototyped the project and began the work on the RFID scanner and the Arduino code, but we were unable to finish it this week. We included many drawings and found good measurements that would be ideal for the project.
maxfieldtrj
Alexander
AKA
Peter Walsh