It's a Two in One Week

The week at a glance:

This week has been filled with challenges for Grad School and at work.  Students always get crazy the week before the holiday, and this week was no exception!  By the time I made it home at 7pm each night I was so exhausted that I would grab a quick snack and then crawl into bed.  Needless to say I did not get any work done for our assignments this week until Friday night.  We had two projects to do this week: design a Maker Space and build a "Dice" LED circuit.

Maker Space Challenge

Last week we turned in information on what we envisioned for our dream Maker Space.  I am not very good at drawing, so I searched for hours until I found a picture that came closest to what I want.  It was very well designed, but I thought there should be a few changes to it.  This week we were assigned to learn SketchUp to make our floorplan for the Maker Space.  Even though I have experience with CAD, SketchUp is very different from the Autodesk Inventor that I am accustomed to using.  I spent several hours watching YouTube videos on how to use SketchUp, but even after that I had a hard time doing the assignment.  It took me so long to do just the building floor plan that I had to stop to work on the other assignment for this week.  I was not able to draw any of the furniture, and I also did not figure out how to draw doors for the openings.  I specifically made the main entrance and one of the shop entrances large enough to accommodate large equipment. (Small garage door size.)  All doors meet the minimum ADA requirement for wheel chair accessibility, and many are larger to allow for larger furniture and/or storage cabinets.  Hopefully from seeing the original picture I modeled my design after you will be able to visualize my intentions.

SketchUp Floor Plan for Dream Maker Space

Dream Maker Space Example
URL for Picture

LED DICE

This circuit has been the most challenging build so far.  The placement of the LEDs on the breadboard is extremely tedious.  Then getting the 330 ohm resistors attached to the correct lead is even more difficult.   I am accustomed to the programming being difficult for me, but this week the assembly has been just as difficult.  Configuring the LEDs in an H pattern is what made assembling the circuit so hard.  Every example I found on the internet seems to be different.  I tried to look at some of my classmates examples that were already posted, but even that did not help make it easier.  I wasn't sure if I followed the schematic I found correctly.

LED Dice Schematic
Instructables Web Site

Since I was having so much trouble understanding the schematic above, I went in search of an example that I might be able to understand easier.  Below is the color example of the LED Dice circuit that I found on a different web site.  With it being in color it made a little more sense to me.

Color Circuit Diagram for LED Dice
Circuitlib Web Site

I tried building the circuit on Tinker Cad, but I never could get the wiring worked out to look like what I built.  Tinker Cad has set a width on the LED leads and adding the additional jumper wires to attempt to match my working circuit did not happen.  Maybe I can do an update later if I can work out that portion.  For now, I will follow the diagram above so that I can finish my circuit on time.

After several hours (approximately 8) I finally got the circuit to function.  It was difficult at times because of the bread board having some ports that are lose and not making a good connection.  When I made my video I could not get all the numbers to work.  I think it was because I was holding the phone with one hand and using the other to hit the push button switch.  I tried to wiggle the wires at the same time, but it didn't work well one handed.  To show that my circuit will produce all the numbers, I took pictures of each one working in addition to the video I made.  

Assembled Circuit 

All 6 Dice Configurations

I took pictures with the lights on in the room and with them off so that I could see the difference on how the LEDs show up.  I don't think my phone takes very good pictures, but that is all I have to work with.  You can definitely see why the circuit uses 7 LEDs in an H pattern.  I wish my kit would have had 7 Red LEDs, but it didn't.  So I used a Blue LED in the center position.  

I tried to think of other uses for a configuration like this.  The one that first came to mind is the Score Boards at almost every sporting event.  I know the one in the gym at school functions very similarly to this circuit.  It also reminds me of the crosswalk signs as they count down right before they change to do not cross. 

A search of the internet was of no use when it came to figuring out the Distribution of Rolls graph for this circuit.  I assume it has something to do with Statistics, and Math is not something I can do well.  I barely manage to keep up with the Inclusion Support in Geometry at school, and if I didn't get example sheets from the teacher I couldn't do that.

I tried to write my own code, but as always it did not work.  Then I printed the code and was trying to copy it by typing the code myself.  But I must have made too many typing errors because when I checked it it was full of errors.  So to get my circuit functioning I downloaded the code below from CircuitLib.com.  This is the link:CircuitLib.com

Code for Dice LED Circuit

//Simple LED Dice based on Arduino
/*circuitlib.com*/
//By G. Adam

int i;
int button=5;
int A=6;
int B=7;
int C=8;
int D=9;
int E=10;
int F=11;
int G=12;

// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
  // initialize digital IO direction
  pinMode(button, INPUT_PULLUP);
  pinMode(A, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(B, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(C, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(D, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(E, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(F, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(G, OUTPUT);

  // initialize counter value
  i=1;
  
}

// Turn on LEDs for mode 6
void turn_on_6 ()
 {
    digitalWrite(A,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(B,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(C,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(D,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(E,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(F,HIGH);
 }

// Turn on LEDs for mode 5
 void turn_on_5 ()
 {
    digitalWrite(A,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(C,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(D,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(F,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(G,HIGH);
  }

// Turn on LEDs for mode 4
void turn_on_4 ()
 {  
    digitalWrite(A,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(F,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(D,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(C,HIGH);
  }

// Turn on LEDs for mode 3
void turn_on_3 ()
 {  
    digitalWrite(C,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(G,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(F,HIGH);
 }

// Turn on LEDs for mode 2
void turn_on_2 ()
 {  
    digitalWrite(F,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(C,HIGH);
 }

// Turn on LEDs for mode 1
void turn_on_1 ()
 {  
  digitalWrite(G,HIGH);
 }

// Turn off all LEDs
 void turn_off_all ()
 {  
    digitalWrite(A,LOW);
    digitalWrite(B,LOW);
    digitalWrite(C,LOW);
    digitalWrite(D,LOW);
    digitalWrite(E,LOW);
    digitalWrite(F,LOW);
    digitalWrite(G,LOW);
 }

// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() 
{
  bool state;
  state=digitalRead(button);   
  if (state==LOW) // Button is pressed?
  {
    turn_off_all();
    if (i==1) turn_on_1();
    if (i==2) turn_on_2();      
    if (i==3) turn_on_3();
    if (i==4) turn_on_4();
    if (i==5) turn_on_5();
    if (i==6) turn_on_6();
  }
 
 i=i+1;
 if (i>6) i=1;
 delay(15);
 
 } 

 

My video did not turn out as well as I would have liked.  There are lose connections on the breadboard and when I would push the button switch I would cause wires to lose connection.  I was unable to get the circuit to cycle through all 6 numbers.  

Dice Circuit Video

Reflections

This is the second time I have written the reflection for this week’s challenges.  I usually write directly on the blog post compose screen.  For some reason when I logged out to see if my hyperlinks worked everything I wrote for the Reflections section was lost.  I don’t know if it was caused by a glitch with the internet or by something I did wrong.  So here I go again!

 There were so many things that did not go well this week that I am not sure where to begin.  My Dream Maker Space was hard to design.  SketchUp was extremely difficult for me even after watching multiple videos and going to the help area for the software for tutorial help.  I believe the difficulty I experienced is because I am so accustomed to using Autodesk Inventor.  My brain just couldn’t easily maneuver the differences between the two softwares.  It took me entirely too long to design the building layout.  I had to make the decision to quit working on it or jeopardize having enough time to get the circuit done.  Because of this I did not get to add furniture or equipment to the diagram.  I also did not have the opportunity to research cost for the building, furnishings, or equipment. 

The Dice LED circuit was the most difficult assembly I have encountered during this class.  The circuit needing to be in an H configuration required the LEDs be placed closely together.  This made it hard to insert the components and jumper wires by hand, so I had to use needle nose pliers for every lead.  Additionally, the breadboard has loose ports on it which caused connection errors.  I had to keep tension on the wires by pulling the Arduino at an angle so the current would flow.  During the video I must have jarred loose wiring when pushing the button switch, which caused two of the numbers in the sequence not to work.  I was able to get regular pictures of each number working. And since Math is my weakest subject, I never figured out how to do the Distribution of Rolls graph.  I tried to find information on the internet for how to do it but did not have any luck.  I assume it is a statistical function, but I am not good at Statistics. 

Overall, I am pleased that I got the circuit to eventually work.  I tried printing the code and looking at that to type it myself, but I obviously can’t do that well either because I ended up with too many errors to figure out.  I ended up downloading the code from the internet.  At least it did work using that code.  Praying I will eventually learn some coding!