Boomboxes

Back in the shop

July 16th, 2008 jesse

This past weekend was excellent. For the first time in the history of the Boomboxes project (yea, we’re working on the site still), we accomplished what we set out to do AND in the amount of time allotted. They will be displayed at the Robofair this weekend @ The Carnegie Museum of Science so I’ll post a video demonstration soon.

For now, before and after pics.

Before: 5 XBee RF Wireless modules

After: 5 XBees + 5 Arduino microcontrollers

Before: Radioshack FM walkmans and FM transmitter (MobMov anyone?)

After: Wireless Indoor/Outdoor speakers

Now, not only is sound quality vastly improving for each ‘box, the color displayed can be much more sophisticated and meaningful for the users. Speaking of color…

We got more RGB LED light bars! Each bar has 3 red, 3 green, and 3 blue LEDs that can be independently mixed to create a pretty wide spectrum of colors. Plus at 12VDC, these little guys are super bright.

Other additions include:

Electret Microphones in each ‘box so that the lights can now “dance” to the music

Arcade style pushbuttons so we can definitely know when someone is sitting down. Prior to this, we tried to make the entire seat top a button which turned out to be as difficult as it sounds. This is much better and, to us, much more clear for the users. Now its just screaming “push me”

And that’s about it folks. The only thing left to do is clean them up and retouch it all with some paint. Expect updates on Boomboxes this weekend to see what all this even means.

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Making Things Interactive final showing

June 10th, 2008 jesse

For Paul and I’s class, Making Things Interactive, we had to present the project on Thursday for a final grade. There were a lot of cool projects and it was nice to see what everyone had been working on the entire semester.

More glorious pics.

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T.I. is King

June 10th, 2008 jesse

I guess its hard to explain what the boxes do; we’re still figuring it out. As of now, they each have a XBee 802.15.4 transceiver capable of 300′ outdoor wireless serial communication and mesh networking. They each have a microcontoller built in capable of serial communication and digital I/O. Also, in every one there’s four amazingly bright 12VDC RGB LED light bars.

Any ideas?

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The Finale

June 10th, 2008 jesse

After continuous 40 hour weeks, a semester’s worth of hard work.

From spending weeks figuring out how to work one of these guys…

…to figuring out how to work 5.

We had endless disappointments with the paint job.

But after all the hard work. Wednesday, 12-2:30 pm, Boomboxes presentation at CMU’s small undergraduate research grant conference, Meeting of the Minds.

We dropped them off at the University Center.

Took one more second to try and figure out our power problem; we decided to make a last minute gamble and went to Radioshack for some camper-sized batteries.

We had to run home to get ready. I needed to shower and use the iron.

Hit the ‘activate’ switch and start the party.

And it was all worth it, in the end.

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Painting

May 5th, 2008 jesse

Finally after Pittsburgh saw some warm weather last week, the primer was dry enough to sand a bit and start applying some paint to.

Here are all the painted frames with acrylic installed. They were simply screwed in with 4 1/2″ wood screws then caulked on all four sides for waterproofing.

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Primer Nightmares

May 5th, 2008 jesse

Learn from us, never use oil based primer.

Not only is it environmentally unfriendly, but it takes two (not one but two) lifetimes to dry. This fiasco set us back a week and ruined the latex based coats of paint afterward. The white and black base coats just peeled off and couldn’t adhere well to the primer.

Thanks Home Depot paint guy, thanks a lot.

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Acrylic Frames

May 5th, 2008 jesse

The frames Paul made had to be fitted with frosted acrylic to diffuse the RGB and White LEDs that were going to be installed. We found a local Pittsburgh branch of Total Plastics Inc that sold and custom cut all 22 1/8″x12″x14″ pieces we needed for only $90. I don’t know if that’s cheap to you, but considering the cost of a big sheet of acrylic plus the time saved in cutting that stuff (which is not easy) we were ecstatic.

Above you can see the acrylic pieces stacked up and all the frames they need to be installed into.

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Stacks

May 5th, 2008 jesse

If our project had one theme it’d be this: STACKS

Stack CNC pieces.
Stack unfinished pieces for sanding and filing.
Stack sanded cuts for fitting adjustments.
Stack ready for assembly pieces for more sanding.
Stack assembled pieces for wood puttying.
Stack putty’d pieces for more sanding.
Stack sanded assembled pieces for priming.

Not to mention the frames for the LEDs…

How could you NOT go crazy after cutting, gluing, and nailing 80+ pieces of MDF strips?!

Not pictured: The stacks of money this thing is costing…

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Time to Cut!

May 5th, 2008 jesse

Given that we were only given one chance (5 hours total) to cut out all the pieces we needed for our project, we chose to adjust our template so to minimize the margin of error. Instead of using male/female connections to construct each box, we chose to implement a groove/slot design which we thought would give us more flexibility in case our measurements or something were off. Other than that, the prototype was pretty solid and so we didn’t change much.

We were pretty much at the mercy of the lab’s monitor who once again helped us put the Illustrator file in Rhino and export it to the machine. In the last minute, we decided to use 3/4″ Birch Plywood instead of MDF and spend the extra money. Although it wouldn’t finish as cleanly, the plywood would be much stronger structurally as well as water resistant. MDF soaks up water like a sponge.

The pieces cut out kind of poorly. In the end, Paul and I should’ve just hand cut each piece. We suspect that the CNC machine was set wrong (wrong speeds or drill bit) so the cut outs were very rough and it took us close to a week to sand and file the 40+ pieces so that they’d fit together. It’s no one’s fault really, the dFab Lab monitors were nice enough to even let us Econ kids use the facilities not to mention all the extra time they put in helping us prep the files. Luckily Paul and I are badasses and worked through.

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First Prototype

May 5th, 2008 jesse

We completed our first prototype of what a Boombox will look like! Unfortunately, we were a bit off when drawing up the templates in Illustrator and had to do some sanding/filing to get the pieces to fit. But once they’re together, you can’t…really…tell…the difference…