Window Shade Alarm Log
9/1/17-9/7/17
Cole, Arnob, and Sam:
Met as a group to brainstorm ideas. Ultimately came up with this proposal: We are hoping to create an apparatus that opens your window shades automatically in the morning which would act as a nicer way to wake up than an annoying alarm. We would a servo motor to open the shades paired with an Arduino. The stimuli to open the shades could be activated based on time, light sensor, noise, and/or power from a solar panel.
9/8/17-9/11/17
Cole, Arnob, and Sam: Met again to come up with a list of supplies needed.
Cole: Focused on the hardware needed for the frame (wood, blind, screws, etc.).
Arnob: Focused on the hardware needed to make the shade move (servo motor, gears, etc.).
Sam: Focused on the Raspberry Pi and the software needed.
9/12/17-9/18/17
Cole, Arnob, and Sam: Met with Andrew on 9/12/17 for weekly meeting and discussed progress so far. Also set following tasks to for the week.
Arnob: Familiarizing himself with 3D modeling software and making gear.
Sam: Familiarizing himself with Raspberry Pi and making the display work.
Cole: Familiarizing himself with Raspberry Pi and making the motor work.
Cole, Arnob, and Sam: Met with Professor Feher and Andrew on 9/15/17 to discuss project.
Cole, Arnob, and Sam: Met as a group for 2 hours on 9/17/17 to continue working with Raspberry PI (display and servo motors). Finalized supply list. Had some difficulty getting servo motor connected to Raspberry PI.
9/19/17-9/25/17
Cole, Arnob, and Sam: Met with Andrew on 9/19/17 for weekly meeting. Each member worked with Andrew on their currents individual tasks as detailed below 1 hour. With the help of Andrew, we decided that we would use an Arduino Dual Step Motor Driver Shield paired with the stepper motor, which can be controlled by HIGH and LOW outputs from either an Arduino or Raspberry PI.
Cole: Worked on connecting stepper motor set up. This included determining that we will use an Arduino to control the motors as well as cutting and re-soldering the servo motor wires.
Sam: Continued to set up LCD display to work with Raspberry Pi. This included installing the necessary drivers to the Raspberry Pi and writing the necessary code.
Arnob: Continued to 3D model the gears with SolidWorks so they can help open the blinds.
Each member continued to work on their individual tasks over the weekend, as detailed below. Also worked on their group presentation.
Arduino Assignment:
photo of code
video
Sam: In the afternoon of Sep 22nd (Friday), Sam spent 2 hours installing the arduino library for the 7-segment LED backpack, a substitute for Raspberry Pi LCD touchscreen. Sam programmed the arduino to make it available for users to set their time with two buttons. Video for Friday's work Spent 2 hours on 9/24 afternoon figuring out the serial communication between Rpi and arduino.
Arnob: Spent 1 hour on Sunday 9/24 making presentation for class on 9/29. Spent 2 hours on Monday 9/25 creating models of gears on SolidWorks. Referenced McMaster-Carr for ideas on different types of gears.
Cole: Spent 2.5 hours in lab on 9/24 to get stepper motor working and update wiki page and log. Finished wiring and successfully programmed it to turn. Stepper motor would only vibrate, not turn. Determined that battery pack is needed in order to provide more voltage (12V).
9/26/17-10/2/17
Met as a group with Andrew and Professor Feher for weekly meeting on 9/26. Each member discussed and worked on their individual components of the project.
Cole: Got the stepper motoring working (with the help of Sam and Andrew). Solution was to unplug one of direction wires. Still unsure of why this works (possibly were sending opposing signals to each other). Will continue to investigate.
Arnob: write what you did at weekly meeting here
Sam: write what you did at weekly meeting here
Cole: Worked in the lab on 9/28. Improved the functionality of the stepper motors, discovered root of wiring problem with Andrew's help, and figured out how to write code for the stepper.
Sam: Worked in the lab on 10/1 fo 3 and half hours in total. First worked with Cole to get NTP running on the RPI. And then installing the LED backpack library and other neccessary standard library (SPI.h) for the Arduino IDE on Raspberry Pi. Improved the code I have before to enable the Arduino correctly print out the time transmitted given by raspberryPi.
Cole: Worked in the lab for 1.5 hours on 10/1 with Sam in order to control the Stepper Motor via the Raspberry PI. It was successful. Also worked with Sam to get NTP running on the RPI. Also spent 45 minutes outside of lab learning how to retrieve local weather data from a Raspberry Pi using the Wunderground API.
Arnob: 3D-printed first gear that will be directly connected to the Stepper motor. Researched the different possibilities for the other parts of our machine, and downloaded the respective templates from McMaster-Carr. Finally, started editing these parts on SolidWorks so we can utilize them for our Window Shade Alarm.
Next steps for group:
- Have RPI send time to Arduino
- Have Arduino accept time from used
- Have Arduino run code at given time
