Author: akim2

Now, we have a complete picture of how the machine will look like. We closely examined the required parts and their specifications more closely to make sure they all meet the design requirements we have set for this project. Admittedly, we did run into some problems due to parts we have bought/borrowed that actually did not entirely meet our requirement. However, we have accommodated those and are ready to build the machine starting this week. That is, unless the extra parts we bought arrive late. However, since there was one week gap for the parts to arrive, it would be unlikely.

As specified in the design report, the final size of the machine body will be a 20 x 20 x 6 cm  wooden box, made by combining mdf plates. The size was chosen after creating virtual images of the assembly as shown above, getting a general sense of the amount of space that would be required for all the parts to fit inside. Although we do not have the dxf file for the wooden plates yet, I am planning on quickly creating those this Monday and hopefully cut them by Tuesday.

Then I will assemble those in to a box and add the caster wheels so that I can adjust the placement of the servo for central rotation. Then, I will add weight in side the box to simulate other parts other than the uno to see if we need to buy a different motor shield to support external power supply or the servo. The one we have currently does not, so it will be drawing power from the Arduino, which is generally not a good idea. However, considering that the load is not too heavy, we thought that the servo may end up not drawing too much current.

In short, it was mostly final polishing of the design plan before moving onto the actual assembly.

We are on track in terms of schedule, and if the servo and the 3D printed dispenser case does not cause any trouble, we will very ahead of schedule by the end of this week (though that would be highly unlikely).

One thing that we failed to foresee is the cost of 3D printing. Whenever there were some parts that seemed ambiguous to purchase or required complex and custom design, we decided we would use 3D printing to make that. However, we only realized later that 3D printing will cost a lot, given the size of the parts we’re trying to print. As such, we would have to aim for reducing the number of trials and errors of printing. Our plan is to make the design as precise as possible to work as we intend it to be. To that end, we’re carefully considering the dimensions of the parts and trying to have a concrete overall design for our parts to assemble later.

No significant changes were made to the existing design of the system. After realizing that adding too much load to the servo may draw too much current, possibly causing problems with the arduino that will be powering it through the 5V line. So, we may decide to use a weaker servo for the dispenser to draw as less power as we can from the arduino, and we are planning to add 4 caster wheels to support the weight of the machine body for spinning.

This will mean additional budget use for buying the wheels, but it is minimal, and we have not used much of the budget so far, so it will be fine.

Motor control code ended early, so Andrew will be helping with building the dispenser and case. Hopefully, the dispenser will be done earlier than we expected.

We have confirmed that the servo works fine. Additional tests will need to be done to see if the 5V power supply from the Arduino will be enough when we add load to it. Such concern was the exact reason why we decided to add wheels to the design for additional support while reducing friction.

At this point, we think our ambition has pushed us to have diverse features, each being quite challenging. Even though we got rid of many components after receiving feedback from the initial meeting, since we strived for seamless integration and smooth gameplay, we ended up including new components, such as player motion detection and resistive sensor. As the complexity was added, we’re trying to split work as efficiently as possible and also start early. In case we’re short of resources(time), we have a set of features that we’re thinking of that are the minimum requirements of our project. As such, if we end up having short of time, we will dispose of those ideas and reinforce our already-implemented features.

We opened the possibility of using a screen as output for communicating with the players. We thought that it may be easier to implement than an audio output. We also narrowed down to work with 4 players at maximum (not 8), which avoid us from struggling with blind spot for using a display as our communication. 

Based on the feedback we received during the presentation, we thought that pressing buttons for check/raise/fold could be tiresome to the players. We’ve come closer to the idea of attaching an additional camera to the machine for detecting raise/fold and putting resistive sensors for detecting checks (double tapping). 

No change in schedule yet. Everything is on track.

This week was mostly finalizing the design and preparing for the actual building and coding. I worked on taking in feedbacks from Proposal and deciding on the final design. Then I searched for appropriate parts to use for the design. Then I realized that there was an inventory that we can use to borrow parts. So I checked the list and found that there existed lots of Raspberry Pis that we could use. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an Arduino.

Our goal this week was to purchase parts and do some research, so I can we are on track. Next week, I need to start coding the motor control logic for our dispenser.