Electric Longboard Weekly Log
February 12th
This week we finalized our project idea for an electric longboard. We decided what pieces we were going to buy and which ones we would make, in addition to producing a timeline and Gantt chart for our project proposal. Also, we needed to create wiki accounts which ended up being more of a pain than we realized. Once we had created our accounts we were able to learn how to create a wiki page and format it to our liking.
- till next week...
February 19th
For the past month we have been thinking about this electric longboard intently. We had a dream of making a remote that corresponded to the opening and closing of the rider's hand using a flex sensor and wirelessly relaying the information to the arduino board and engine. This week we found out our project was a bit too ambitious and was not going to work. A crushing blow to our spirits, self esteem and confidence, but soon we realized this is a part of engineering. Nobody said this would be easy so we are ready for the challenge! Bring it! After a long talk we discovered it would be too risky financially and physically in the time frame that we have. As a result we have been brainstorming new project ideas, and scaled down versions of the electric longboard. After many brainstorming sessions and one very productive meeting with Alden we have decided to make an electric longboard without a motor, that focuses more on gadgetry and enhancing the riding experience. We hope to figure out how to measure the speed of the longboard, position, and direction of its motion while adding headlights for a safer night riding experience. (but don't forget to wear a helmet!) At the moment we are thinking of using a raspberry pi (not for eating) to create a self sustained circuit that will be confined to the board. We want it to be able to intake data from a gps chip and convert it to a distance traveled, add a reed switch circuit to measure how many times the wheel spins(how fast we are going), and make headlights and potentially back lights which will switch on and off based on direction of motion. At the moment we are nailing down our project proposal and hope to have a very concrete idea of what we are doing by the end of the weekend.
