Justin’s Final Project
Now at the end of Blue Stamp, I am posting my blog post about my final project as well as my experience here. For a brief description of my project, experience, and future plans, check out my video. Bill of Materials, Daily Notebook, Circuit Diagram, and my code are all below as well.
Last year, I started to become interested in the field of engineering from my interest in automobiles. Then in my freshman year Dave, one of the co-creators of Blue Stamp, came to my school of Staten Island Technical High School and told me of this program. Due to the fact that I had no idea of anything about engineering, I thought it was a cool idea. Blue Stamp ended up teaching me about different fields of engineering- software, firmware, and hardware- in a fun way. I experienced failure and success throughout these six weeks and came out with my own fully functional alarm clock.
The project that I took on was an MSP-430 based alarm clock inspired by Markus Gritsch at http://dangerousprototypes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=2126. However, I ran into problems with his code and decided to switch to an Arduino. I started out with just clock code made by the instructor Ryan Caeti. Then, over a few weeks, I experienced the hardest part of this project which, in turn, became the funnest part as well: coding. I coded the colon to blink, buttons to set alarm and time, and a buzzer that goes off at a certain time. I then learned how to use tools like the dremel to cut holes in the box so I can make my alarm clock nice and neat.
Here are the functions of my alarm clock:
- To set alarm on or off, press the third button. The third decimal point lights up to show it is on.
- To enter time set up mode, press both the first and second button at the same time. The colon stops blinking to show you are in this mode.
- To enter alarm set up mode, press the second button. Both the colon stops blinking and the first decimal point turns on to show your in this mode.
- When your in any type of set up mode, press the first button to go an hour ahead, the second button to go a minute ahead, and the third button to exit the mode.
- If the alarm buzzes, press the first button to turn it off.
Making this project was very fun and educational. It taught me about the types of engineering, the aspect of debugging, and that even if something appears simple it may not be. Even tough Blue Stamp is now over, I don’t plan to stop. I want to continue modifying this by adding an ability to go backwards when setting up the time and making the box look nicer, as well as anything else that I think might be cool
DOCUMENTATION:
- Here is my Bill of Materials: Justin T Bill of Materials
- Here is my Daily Notebook: JustinT.2012BSENYCPMNotebook
- Here is my Circuit Diagram (Using Eagle CAD): Justin T Clock Sch
- Here is the code I started with: Justing T Starting Clock Code
- Here is my final code: Justin T FinalClock Code
Here is the video:
Justin’s Clock: Milestone 3
Today I also set up “alarm set up”. To enter this mode that changes when the alarm goes off, you press button two. The first decimal point turns on to indicate you are in this mode, and the controls are the same as “time set up”.
Watch the video at:
Justin’s Clock: Milestone 2
Today I completed my next milestone, which is to make it possible to edit the time from outside the code. To enter this “set up mode”, you press buttons one and two simultaneously. You add an hour by pressing button one and add a minute by pressing button two. To exit, you press button three.
Watch the video at:
Justin’s Clock: Milestone 1
Today I finished my first milestone by putting every thing together on the breadboard and by getting the clock function to work. This part was fairly easy.
The next step is to get the setup mode working.
Justin’s VoiceChanger
For my starter project, I created a voice changer from a kit made by Velleman-kit.
It was fun to build and it taught me things about soldering.
In the end, the completed version was pretty cool.