Conclusion

Today was the day we finally presented our Lego Bubble Machine. We all got there an hour or so early, and took a short breather in Olney. It was soon going to go down, but we took the time to relax and keep our minds off this project after such a hard jobs' work the night before. Then, being almost 12, it was time to go!

Setup/Failures:
We headed down to Cumnock Hall to find a station to set up our project, and when we got there we took a quick observation look at our peers' projects. Everyone's ideas were amazing and unique, whether they were functional or not. Regaining focus on our own project, we started to setup the mechanism for display and readied ourselves to "sell." The setup was perfect, and the mechanism was ready to go. Then, our first problem arised. The "hacked" deodorant can that held our bubble solution was becoming really unstable, and became unaligned in regards to the bubble wand's position. This was followed by a more devastating problem where our solder came undone on our servo.

We tried to come up with a quick resolution to this problem, and used some type of adhesive to keep the servo intact with its wires. It worked again! Then, ANOTHER problem came upon us where our power supply started juicing out battery acid. This is when we called it quits. With multiple of visitors wondering why our mechanism didn't work, we explained our situation and they understood. They still thought it was a creative design, and a fun one, too. Luckily, we had a video of the mechanism working and they enjoyed the brief recording of bubbles blowing. 

Having an unsuccessful project presentation, we still enjoyed the "expo" and its atompshere of exploding enthusiasm. The experience was one that needs a repitition. Aside from the expo, the project itself was a great learning experience. It ranged from the use of Arduino as an essential source of a project to licking a battery to check if it still had some juice left. Everyone in the group definitely learned something new. We were happy with the result that our project did work at one point. Kudos, guys! 

Contributions:

Everyone contributed to the project. Christopher Riccio was the man with alacrity. He took the project design into his own hands, and built a lego landscape to place the mechanism on. This was not the only contribution to the project, though. He also connected a servo to the design to give mobility to the bubble wand, and came up with many fantastic ideas to get this mechanism to stay structurally stable. Ducktape was his friend, but in the end he came to abandon this friendship for Plastic Bonder. Alongside his enthusiasm for this project, he was also generous enough to give us a place during the long weekend to work on our project.

Mike Law would not give up! And that was not a bad trait. Without him, there would be no moving, dipping, blowing of the wand. He took the initiative to do ALL of the code. He was not selfless about it, either. He was opened to us and explained what each part of the code did when we asked. Aside from the code, he "hacked" his deodorant can and made a LIFT for the bubble solution. There was no end to his determination to get this project done and working. Mike was also the supply man. His favorite line was, "I just found some stuff in my basement!" With these "stuff" in his basement, we were able to be resourceful with the project. 

Irini Billiri was supportive about everything during this project. She was opened to all the ideas that came across, and contributed her owns, too. She was the contriver of the group, keeping us on track and confirming the time of when our next meetings should be held. Regarding the project itself, she designed the bubble wand using SolidWorks and the team flag with Mirv the Slug as our mascot. She took part in repairing the project the night before it was going to be presented, writing some of the blogs to keep our viewers updated with our progress, and lended us the SWE room to work in peace on this project. Irini endlessly contributed to this project, and even wrote the end paper.

Virath Chea was quiet, observative and spoke when he had an idea. He took the time to see what was happening with this project. He pointed out structural ideas, such as the use of the legos to hold the fan and the deodorant can.  Also, he pointed out flaws and what actions could be taken to make improvements. He took this project as a learning experience, and took interest in everything that was happening. He also did some of the blogging. 

Conclusion:
Thank you for following us with our endeavors in this project! 

Here is a video of our final machine blowing the bubbles. Although the shot does not show the deoderant can servo lifting the bubble solution, this clip shows the wand moving from one end to the next, and the DC motor rotating the fan to form the bubbles.

Here is the wand we are having 3D printed for our device. The bubble wand will be attached to the servo that moves from one end of the lego path to the other, and when it reaches the end, the deoderant can will lift a cup of bubble solution to the wand.

Modified Code

         Today I worked on the code that I uploaded yesterday.  There are still a few things that I would like to fix such as not allowing the user to press the same button sequentially.   I would like to add this feature because I don't want the carriage to be told to move in a direction when it's already at the edge.  Otherwise the carriage will be pushing against the wall.  
          The code I wrote today is the following:

Here is a video of the code working.  At the beginning i'm showing that the servo is attached to pin 6 and I lay the deodorant stick down and press the buttons.  This is what the cold will be doing to the carriage the only difference is that the carriage is on a track and will go straight.   The second part of the video is me showing the servo is attached to pin 9 and how using a potentiometer one can raise and lower the cup.

-Mike Law                                                                                                                                

This code is similar to the one in an earlier post, but the speed of the motor was more controlled. If you scroll down to the video of the motor and legos titled "Main mechanism!", this is the code used for it to slide left and right.

deoderant stick and continuous servo

The bubble solution will be placed inside the cup and will be raised to the wand.  In order for this to work I cut a deodorant stick as shown

 and screwed a servo arm to the bottom.

Although it is not shown in this picture I ended up using duct tape because the arm was still able to move.  After that was completed I hooked up the continuous servo motor to the bottom and taped the servo to the stick at the bottom.

Here is a video of the motor moving the cup up and down.

Now that I have this part functioning I can begin messing around with the code so that when the cart is directly under the bubble solution the cup will rise.

Main mechanism!

We introduce to you the Lego in "Lego Bubble Blowing Machine." The servo has been masked under legos, but it's function can clearly be seen in this video. It serves as a slider between two ends of lego land. This setup was built upon the older idea of the two cups in one of the earlier posts. The purpose of it all is still the same, though. Imagine bubbles at one end and a fan at the other. Now imagine a bubble wand extending from the servo in which will dip into that awesome solution of soap, and then transfer itself to the other side to create bubbles!  

I also purchased a set of propellers of Amazon.com and attached one to a DC motor.   We were having trouble finding a fan that would work.  It's still not the most powerful fan but it does produce a breeze.

I also grabbed a empty deodorant can and screwed a arm to a servo motor to the bottom of it.  What I'd like to do the next time our group meets is see if Chris's continuous servo would work on the bottom.  What we want to do is have bubble solution inside and have the servo on the bottom crank it up.   

H-Bridge Working

I recently purchased a H-Bridge online and I found code to test it with.  Now that I see it works I'm going to add two buttons to my breadboard and program my arduino so that when one button is pressed it travels one way and when the other is pressed it travels the other.  I also need to slow down my DC motor.

video of the servo in continuous motion

video of the mechanism moving back and forth, done by hand

picture of the moving assembly

picture of the H-bridge

I've modified my servo in order for it to move continuously in both directions, with this i can attach it to the moving tram so it will move back and forth.

I have made an H-bridge that will allow for better controls of motors.

I have coding for both the H-bridge and the servo that is modified both from code made by my professor, and code that I found online

-Christopher Riccio

Bubblesteen Bubble Machine.avi

Here is a video which inspired our first ideas into something alittle bit more snazzy.

The first draft!

During the second group meeting, we built upon the idea of the bubble machine by splitting the workload between the four of us. Each of us thought of our own mechanisms, and thought about combining them into one whole mechanism by the end mark of this project.

For one of the schematics, a DC motor was placed upon an iron bar which was stacked onto two cups. The cups are approximately a foot and a half away from each other. The DC motor will function as a kind of slider, which the bubble wand is attached to. It will slide back and forth between both ends of the bar. At one end of the bar there will be a bubble solution in which the wand will dip and slide to the other end. At the other end there is a fan that will blow the bubble!! Here is a sketch of what the schematic looks like.

 

Here is an upside down picture of our apparatus. It was faced upside down for interest points. Just kidding, we couldn't get it to be rightsideup.

And since we didn't mention this in the previous blog, our fellow bubblers are Mike Law, Christopher Riccio, Irini Billiri, and Sianvirath Chea.        

First Official Meeting - 11/11/13

     On the morning of Monday, November 11, 2013, our first official meeting as a group took place. During the pervious lab period, we decided to construct a Bubble Machine. This bubble machine will have a fan connected to a DC motor, and multiple bubble wands connected to a Servos. The bubble wands will bend down from their inital positions into a vat of solution below, and upon rising, the fan will blow air agains them, forming bubbles.

Figure 1 below shows a rough diagram of how the machine will be set up.

     Where part 1(and the similar knobs below) represent each of the wands to be connected by a servo to dip into the solution. Each wand will be connected to it's own individual Servo, and will be controlled by their own buttons. Part 2 represents a large board used as a base. This base board will also have a large container of bubble fluid on it for the wands to dip in. Part 3 represents a DC motor that will spin 360` and will have one single wand attached to it. Finally, part 4 is where the fan will be located, and will be a DC motor with a propellor, or just a stronger fan, depending on what we find.

The code below is a draft of the code to run the DC motor and the fan.

https://gist.github.com/lawm1991/7416595