Author: afiol

This past week I ordered the remaining parts, which included 14 solenoids and 6 transistors. This puts us at around half of our budget since solenoids that produce enough force for our purpose are expensive. Moreover, I ordered more parts than we needed to mitigate the risk that some parts could break when putting the project together. Hopefully, they will arrive soon, and I can assemble all the circuitry required for depressing the piano keys. Meanwhile, I have been helping Nora with the microcontroller portion of the project. We have been working on getting a proof of concept where we take a converted sheet of music from the OMR, parse it into a python object using music21, and schedule the notes on the correct gpio pins that will be connected to our solenoids. Instead of solenoids, we have been using LEDs in the configuration of piano keys to get a visual of which keys will be pressed by a solenoid at a given time. We successfully got the LEDs to light up in the order of a C and Chromatic C scale. Ultimately, we will need to refine the scheduling algorithm further to handle things like rests, chords, successive eighth notes, etc., but getting it to do a basic C scale was a big step. Additionally, when moving from LEDs to solenoids, we will have to account for factors that do not come with LEDs, such as the physical limit that the solenoids can move back and forth. Overall, aside from being unable to get my hands on the remaining parts, it was a productive week in terms of moving toward our final goal.

Not being able to receive our parts this week did not put me behind my current schedule. Although it would have been nice to get everything here this week, on our Gantt chart, I scheduled next week for building the circuitry we will need for the final version of our project. I would still like to keep some momentum going, so while I’m building the circuitry next week, I will also be thinking and drawing out rough sketches of what will be holding everything in place over the piano.

As I have already stated, next week, I hope to put together the circuitry for the final version of the project. Obviously, it may not be exactly what we need at the end of the semester, so I will not be soldering anything yet. Still, I hope to put something together so that we can integrate the microcontroller and solenoids to get an accurate feel for the timing. Additionally, I would like to aim for a rough design of our final chassis. This does not have to be what we end up going with, but just something to think about while I put together the circuitry.

This week I completed everything I aimed to following proposal presentation week. I wanted to order a handful of solenoids to test before deciding which ones we will be using to depress the piano keys. Additionally, I ordered a handful of MOSFETs designed to handle high voltage and current, which is perfect for our project since solenoids require a high voltage and draw about one ampere of current. Being able to get my hands on those parts as soon as possible was my top priority, and since I was able to get them within the week, we were also able to test the solenoids with a power source, our raspberry pi, and the MOSFETs I ordered.  All the parts worked exactly as planned, and now that we have tested the different solenoids, we have decided to go with the Adafruit 25 N solenoids.

Image of our single MOSFET and solenoid circuit:

As of this week I am on track according to the first iteration of our Gantt chart. I had hoped to get some parts ordered and tested by the end of the week, and that is exactly what I accomplished. Furthermore, I have helped a little with our design presentation and will be the audience for Rahul tomorrow when he practices for the presentation.

Next week, I hope to order the rest of our soleniods and MOSFETs, so I can begin building what will hopefully be the final circuitry for our accompanyBot. Additionally, I would like to help Nora develop the python code that will turn the MOSFETs on and cause the solenoids to move according to the XML file produced by the optical music parser. Lastly, if I have time, I would like to think about what the final structure that will be holding the circuitry and microcontroller will look like and possibly have a rough mockup of it sketched.

Finally, I used skills primarily developed in 18220 throughout the course of the past week.  Specifically, skills relating to principles 6 and 5 enumerated in our team report. 18220 helped develop analytical and team skills that I was able to utilize when working on the project and putting together a basic circuit to power the solenoids.

This week, I spent a significant amount of my time creating, editing, and preparing our proposal presentation. I presented on Monday and look forward to reviewing the feedback I will receive in the next few days. I felt like I did a decent job, but I know that with time and experience, the nerves will go away, and I will be able to present much more fluidly. My group and I also appreciated the questions from other groups and have taken them into consideration.

Aside from preparing for the presentation, I have also been looking into possible solenoids that I can use for the actuator part of our accompanyBot. We have selected two 25 N solenoids to test and one 5 N solenoid. After looking through previous projects with similar ambitions to ours, we have determined that getting solenoids with a higher force output, like 25 N, would likely be better when pressing down the piano key. Unfortunately, they are more expensive, so we would also like to order a 5 N solenoid to verify that they do not work as effectively before buying all 25 N solenoids.

Furthermore, I have done some preliminary research into how we will manage the power required for our system and what else will likely be necessary for the circuitry component of the project.

To conclude, I am currently on track with the Gantt chart presented in our project proposal. I hope to be more productive in the coming weeks as I aim to talk with our TA and order some parts at the start of next week. Hopefully, our parts ship fast, and I can begin testing and determining which solenoid we should use; however, if that is not the case, I plan on helping Nora develop and implement a plan for the microcontroller component of the project as we wait for parts.