Hi, my name is Nina. I am a rising sophomore at the Village School in Houston. I have always been interested in engineering, but I never had the chance to try it. So, when Robin came to my class and showed everyone examples of projects, I knew I wanted to be a part of BlueStamp.
Final Post:
The final part of my project is finally done! I didn’t do much to the fan, but all I did to make my name more clear was adjust the time of the drawing. This helped the image created look a lot more readable. One thing I suggest to people who are building this is to get a good quality fan that moves at a consistent speed so you will be able to keep the message still rather than it looking like it is revolving, because one problem I had was that the fan kept changing its speed, so the image was never completely still and kept changing direction.
Schematic:
I used this schematic to attach the first LED, and continued to do the same thing while putting each LED in a different pin. I also added 220 ohm resistors.
Code:
int pins[] = {13,12,11,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2}; // an array of pin numbers
int col_len = 12; // column length
// customizable parameters
int timer1 = 2; // time between columns
int timer2 = 1; // time between frames
double timer3 = 13.28960956; // time between drawings
int frame_len = 7; // frame length
int frame_num = 4 ; // number of frames
// data corresponding to the image to be displayed
int data[] = { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, 0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0, 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1, 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1, 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1, 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, 0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0, 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, 1,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0, 1,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0, 1,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0, 1,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0, 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 };
void setup()
{
int i;
for (i = 0; i < col_len; i++)
pinMode(pins[i], OUTPUT); // set each pin as an output
}
void loop()
{
int a,b,c;
//go through all data for all columns in each frame.
for (a = 0; a < frame_num; a++)
{
for (b = 0; b < frame_len; b++)
{
for (c = 0; c < col_len; c++)
{
if (data[a*frame_len*col_len + b*col_len + c] == 0) {digitalWrite(pins[c], LOW);}
else {digitalWrite(pins[c], HIGH);}
}
delay(timer1);
}
for (c = 0; c < col_len; c++)
{digitalWrite(pins[c], LOW);}
delay(timer2);
}
delay(timer3);
}
Bill of Materials: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PI3PhIRMYHUrJurFSg5toOmRIWcRZMWdepj63i0ldYk/edit#gid=0
Milestone 1: Attaching Led’s to Fan
For my main project, I decided to build a POV display. I have recently completed the construction part of this project, and have completed the first stage of programming it. I have programmed the light to display my name when the fan is spinning. This is a really important accomplishment, because I finished most of the project, so now all I have to do is program, and make it so the lights look clear and the message can be easily read. Constructing this was fairly easy to do, but the only hard part was finding out a way to keep the battery on the board. I didn’t want to glue it, because then I wouldn’t be able to replace the battery, so I decided the best way to go would be to tape it. After I did that, it worked a few times, but then the battery flew off of the board. It was at that moment that I decided to glue the tape down to the board so it wouldn’t move. Since then, it hasn’t flown off the board.
Starter project: For the starter project I decided to do the Minty Boost portable phone charger. I picked this project because it seemed like the most interesting thing to do. It was really easy to do because I had already taken an Electronics class, so I knew the basics like how to build simple circuit and how to solder. Even though I knew those thing already, I still learned the functions of basic components, and that help me quite a bit.
