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Cole’s Status Report for Apr. 12

This week I started making the box that will hold all the components for our robot. I could not find a free version with shelves so I had to CAD those myself. The idea is that we can organize the components so that the things that are seperate systems from interfering with each other.

I also helped to start decouple the machine-soldered pins on the motor driver so that we can make the connections permanent as we start to finalize the robot.

This coming week I will start to solder the boards that connect the lipos that will power the electronics and the robot itself.  I will also be adding the heat shielding where we can to minimize damage to the lipos.

 

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Team Status Report for Mar 29

This week we started working on integration and trying to see what angles puts out the fire the best.

This upcoming week we have our Interim Demo where we plan to show each individual aspect of our project working on its own. We are planning to first integrate the raspberry pi with our ESP32 signal generator to make sure we can toggle the speaker output.

We also are going to build a mount for the speaker with a locked hinge and testing which angle works the most effectivly.

We will also be taking in any suggestions we make get from instructors during the Interim Demo.

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Cole’s Status Report for Mar 29

This week I helped to set up for the demo. For me personally, this means making sure the robot works with the raspberry pi and that the collimator works with the speaker to put out the largest fire possible.

I also made a CAD model for the chassis of our robot to make it easier to visualize how we are going to mount the speaker on the robot and how we are going to add the box of other components to the other side of the chassis to counterbalance the weight of the speaker.

Going forward I will start laser cutting a box to store the components and start heat shielding it to make sure the LiPo’s are safe while we conduct the fire tests.

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Team Status Report for Mar 22.

This week we had a working fire test!!!

Using the preliminary collimator we made out of duct tape and cardstock we were able to extinguish 3 candles at once. We were a little concerned about this test as the collimator was made of a flammable material so the test was conducted at a further distance than we originally planned. Not only that, the collimator itself was longer than we have planned for our final design. This indicates that with our final design being shorter and more fire-safe we can likely put our significantly larger fires than 3 candles at once.

This coming week we plan to start integrating the basics of out project to start preparing for our interim demo. We hope to have the demo be us extinguishing fire from the speaker mounted in some non-final form on the robot which we drive with a keyboard.

 

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Cole’s Status Report for Mar 22

This week I helped to complete the robot construction. Using the L298N motor controllers we used the GPIO Pins on the Raspberry Ri to drive the four motors. Our end goal is to have the computer vision model talking to the functions we wrote to go forward, backward, left, and right, but at the moment we used keyboard inputs to decide which way the robot was driving

 

This week I also helped to construct the preliminary collimator that will be used to conduct our first successful fire test. This was a great success and worked better than we could have hoped it would.

 

This coming week I will be measuring the chassis we ordered to get a 3D model so we can start building a housing unit and a mount for the speaker.

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Coles Status Report for Mar 15

This week I had the joy of completing the ethics assignment. I learned a whole lot about how fire extinguishers are probably good for the public health. I also did some deep reflecting on how a user might misuse our product by lighting their ear on fire and sticking the device very close to it.

This week I also connected the motor drivers to the encoders that come with the kit. The starter code may need to be edited further than I originally thought but it should be a fairly easy workaround.

 

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Cole’s Status Report for Mar 8th.

This week I helped as our group completed a large portion of the requirements of our MVP.

I helped to successfully write code for our ESP32 microcontroller DAC to generate the 60Hz sine wave. This was not only verified on input to the Amplifier using the oscilloscope and it was verified on the output of the Amplifier to ensure that the 60Hz wave was unmodulated.

I also helped to attach and the speaker to the Amplifier and verify that we could produce a sound. The speaker was not able to put out a fire but this was to be expected as we need a column to focus the sound waves in order to extinguish a fire.

I also helped to assemble the robot chassis that finally came in. While the it has not been tested it certainly will be this coming week.

I also helped to write the Design Report we had due friday helping to organize figures and write our testing plans for various parts of our project.

This week I plan to test the robot to make sure we can accurately drive it in the directions we need. The goal by the end of the week is to make the chassis able to integrate with the Raspberry Pi.

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Cole’s Status Report for Feb 22

This week I reviewed design presentations and helped to work on ours.

After receiving parts and creating the design presentation I was able to start conceptualizing the size, material, and general design of the housing that will hold LiPo batteries and the Raspberry Pi. At the moment the box will be laser cut out of wood with the interior and exterior in aluminum foil to keep the internal temperature steady while preventing the proximity to the fire from increasing the internal temperature.

I also helped to test the amplifier using a power supply, wave generator, and an oscilloscope. Learning how to hook everything up and power it took a decent amount of time on Saturday but we ran at least 1 successful test with the amp.

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Team Status Report for Feb 15th

This week we had our first successful proof-of-concept test! Using an app on our phones we were able to generate a 60Hz wave that put out a candle several times. To ensure our test was what we believed was going on rather than simply the air from our phone speaker we played a song at full volume at the candle. What we observed was that the song at full volume was NEVER able to extinguish the fire while the 60Hz wave consistently able to.

We also worked on our design presentation this week, incorporating feedback we received from Gloria Chang to better specify the parameters and our Minimum Viable Product.

Our next steps will be presenting this week and giving feedback to other groups. We also hope to receive the parts we ordered so that we can start assembling the parts and running tests using the full size sub-woofer magnet.

 

 

A: We are aiming to build a non-invasive, reusable fire extinguisher. This addresses a significant gap in current public welfare. With fire extinguishers that exist now a human being has to identify a fire, react quickly to find the nearest fire extinguisher and then spray a foam on the fire that puts it out. Now what was previously on fire is covered in a foam spray that needs to be cleaned off. We are eliminating all of these by having a device that can identify the fire on its own, fully extinguish the fire within 20 seconds, and it uses sound waves that will not have to be cleaned after use.

B: Does not apply. Our project aims to eliminate the human factor of a single user application and thus does not have a social interaction implication.

C: Currently, fire extinguishers expire and need to be replaced regularly. We are planning to offer a solution with rechargeable batteries that will not expire. Our solution will certainly have a higher initial cost than the ~$80 that a fire extinguisher costs, but because of the longer lifespan our solution will cost less amortized over decades.

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Cole’s Status Report for Feb 15th

This week, I focused on researching suitable lithium polymer (LiPo) batteries to power an amplifier and reviewed the code for a chassis kit sourced from Amazon. The aim was to ensure compatibility, efficiency, and safety in integrating these components into our project.

 

After looking at LiPo battery models and specifications suitable for powering the amplifier and analyzing battery capacity, discharge rates, and form factors to meet project requirements, I settled on 2200mah 3S 30C LiPo’s to power the microcontrollers and chassis motors. For the speaker and amplifier I chose 1500mah 4S 120C LiPos to power the speaker magnet. After reviewing the code that came with the chassis kit it looks like the vast majority of the work has been done for us. We likely will only have to change the pin connections in the code, wire it to the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi, and call the prewritten functions.

The next steps will be continue work on the design presentation and help assemble the equipment we ordered for the first test.