With one week of the design project left, a lot of tasks must be completed. While most of the project has been finished, only connecting the entire system and completing the finishing touches are left. The major tasks that are completed are the adjustments to the rails, attaching the peripheral features (i.e. the hands) to the main body, and wiring all the electric components together. The rails are more or less completed, but some adjustments are made to prevent the pole of the body from wobbling too much and falling over. Attaching the peripheral parts just means attaching the hands to the body, which is an easy task to complete. The hardest job is connecting all of the wires and merging all of the code together.
Outline
- Adjust the rails
- Complete the body
- Wire up the animatronic
Adjusting the Rails
Because the body is high relative to the rail contraption, instability is to be expected with the animatronic device wobbling as a result. To improve this problem, we tied the pole to hooks that are on the platform of the rails as shown in Figure 1. This design increases the stability at the bottom of the pole to prevent the animatronic device's body from toppling over from the force of the piston. The top portion of the body will still be wobbly, but the entire animation is ensured to not fall loose from its rails.
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| Figure 1: Base Stabilizers |
Attaching Hands to Body
Last week, we made the hands. This week, we will attach the hands onto the animatronic device's arms to complete the body design as shown in Figure 2. The hand has a small PVC pipe connected from the inside of its palm into the arm. Within the arm is a foam piece that is adjusted to fit snugly inside the PVC pipe of the arm. The foam is glued into the the PVC to make sure it does not fall out during the testing of the animatronic device. A hole is then created inside the foam to tightly contain the small PVC pipe, connecting the hand and the arm together.
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| Figure 2: Hands Connected to the Arms |
Wiring the Animatronic Device
To finish up the design, we are wiring all of the electronic components together. Because our design contains a lot of motors, lighting, and audio, the amount of wires is numerous. Below in Figure 3 and Figure 4 are previews of our wiring setup. We are working on a simplified version of the electric system, but for now, these pictures hopefully provide some insights on wiring the system.
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| Figure 3: Arduino Breadboard with Solenoid |
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| Figure 4: Circuit with Amplifier |
