This week, I spent a significant amount of time on refining our implementation plan as we approach our design review this upcoming week. In particular, our team had many concerns about both the size and power issues of our initial plan to use an array of actuators that each control each braille pin. In terms of size, there were no affordable actuators that were realistically small enough for our requirements. We also considered the power usage of the available solenoids, which require a current always to keep a pin up.
As a result, my progress was also behind for this week since we got caught in these technical issues. However, I made significant progress during a meeting on Friday with our group. I suggested we find inspiration on the internet for other methods of actuating an array of pins. This led to great team progress with a newer idea (sliders for every column that have an encoding that cycles through all combinations of pins per column).
I also contributed to the design review presentation and document by addressing the implementation plan and researching which components exactly we need. I started by looking into the types of small motors we could use to precisely control the sliders. For example, I compared stepper motors to servo motors in terms of precision, speed, power, and size. I found that there were similar size characteristics but stepper motors require less power.
Next week, I hope to first finalize an initial parts list based on our current implementation plan. I aim to also order parts to begin testing as well as begin on CAD models for the device.