ENGR 112-532

Team 18

Project Design Journal

Team name: Team 18
Team Members:
Team Norms
1. Supporting team members
2. Respectful of all ideas presented
3. On time to every meeting
4. Produce high quality work
5. Brainstorming as a team
6. Keep focused on the project
7. Share the workload
8. Participation of all members
9. No rank in the room
Individual Norms
1. Contribute time/ideas
2. Dedication to the team goal
3. Lack of an ego
4. Creativity
5. Organization
6. Communication
7. Respect for other ideas
8. Dependence on one another
9. Come prepared

Agenda:
Meetings for our team will be help Tuesday afternoons with the addition of extra days at the
discretion of team members and their progress.

Project Overview:
A variant of Ebola has begun to spread in rural Anggaur Island in Palau. This particular strain is
noticeably more transmittable, thus it has gathered the attention of the World Health
Organization. To stop this spreading, the WHO has implemented a step that involves the
distribution of antiviruses into wells. The robot our task force has been tasked with must be
ENGR 112-532
Team 18

able to identify the correct combination of pellets needed to treat the water and then dispense
them, all automatically.
Meeting Schedule:
Meetings will start by discussing the current project and how we will approach the problem.
Lane Kirstein will serve as the Recorder, Danny Velez will act as the Time Keeper, and Travis
Brudick and Ziyan Hirani will act as designers for the various projects. At the end of each
meetings we will discuss how we could have managed our time and resource better so that the
next meeting will run more efficiently.
Meeting Notes:
Meeting 1: Attended by Travis and Lane. We worked on a few possible designs for the
dispenser, before using one of the sample designs as inspiration for ours. We settled on using a
rotating cup to keep the marbles from getting stuck, and a hole in the side to let them out.
Meeting 2: Attended by Lane, Danny and Ziyan. We finished the design and also finished the
project notebook.
Meeting 3: Entire task force met to work on the marble feeder design.
Meeting 4: Entire task force met to finish the marble feeder design and to finish the code to run
the device.
Meeting 5: Task force met to create the design and build the marble sorter.
Meetings 6-8: Integration of all the parts into a fully functioning robot and work on the code.

Preliminary Designs:
ENGR 112-532
Team 18

Pictures of the initial design for the marble dispenser

Work Distribution Plan:

Lane will serve as the recorder. He will write down and document what happens at all of the
meetings. Danny will be our timekeeper, and record what hours we all work. Travis and Ziyan
will be our designers and planners. They will work on the technical drawings of all the different
design phases we go through.

Name Date Total Time What Was Done

Lane 3/23/15 2 hours Preliminary
Design
Travis 3/23/15 2 hours Preliminary
Design
Lane 3/24/15 2 hours Finished design
and wrote
notebook
Danny 3/24/15 2 hours Finished design
and wrote
notebook
Ziyan 3/24/15 2 hours Finished design
and wrote
notebook
Entire Task 4/8/15 1.5 hours Made card
Force feeder machine
Entire Task 4/9/15 2 hours Wrote labview
Force program
Entire Task 4/30/15 3 hours Integration of all
Force parts
ENGR 112-532
Team 18

Entire Task 5/2/15 2 hours Coding for final

Force build
Entire Task 5/3/15 8 hours Final testing and
Force finishing

Design Challenge 1:
In design challenge 1 we were required to test the response of the Lego light sensor to different
colors. This was important for the overall project because everything hinged on the light
sensors reading the bar code and the marbles correctly.
Design Challenge 2:
For this challenge we had to take measurement about the different marble we would be using
in this project. This challenge was very useful for us as it allowed us to take the necessary
readings and observations to be able to distinguish between the marble types. The data we
gathered from this step is listed below.
ENGR 112-532
Team 18
ENGR 112-532
Team 18
ENGR 112-532
Team 18

Specifications of final project:

ENGR 112-532
Team 18

Marble Dispenser:
Our initial design features a standard solo cup that rotates about its central axis. The cup has a
hole roughly .25X.75 inches at its base that allows the marbles to fall out as it rotates. The base
of the device is lined with tape that catches all the marbles as they fall, and directs them to a
central chute, so they can fall into a container. Our program is designed to spin at a fast speed
for the first 20 seconds to get the bulk of the marbles out, and then slow down for the second
20 seconds to allow for the last few marbles to fall out.
Marble Card Feeder device:
The marble feeder device works by having two spinning wheels slowly drag the card under the
color reader. The reader takes a reading every one second, which is exactly how long the feeder
moves the card from stripe to stripe. This lets us read all 8 stripes and getting the correct code.
A picture of the device below.

Program for card reader:

The program for the card reader works by moving the card at 10% speed, and taking a light
sensor reading every 1 second, which is how long it takes for the card to move from stripe to
ENGR 112-532
Team 18

stripe. Then the color sensor feeds the reflected light value into a case structure, if it is black it
outputs the number 1 into an array, and if it is white, it outputs a 0.

Marble Sorter Design:

The marble sorter works by using a track made out of Popsicle sticks that slowly widens to
separate the small from the large marbles. Then it uses the color sensors to distinguish
between the different types of marbles. This part of the process was done mostly by teams 17
and 19, because that is how we divided the responsibilities up. This design was vastly changed
and complicated as we further progressed through the project. In the end, we had the track as
described, and then multiple pathways that led to blocks in the road. At these block there
would be a light sensor which would identify the marble. Then the program would check the
type that was read against the types the card reader said we needed. If it turned out it was a
marble we needed, a motor pushed it down a different pathway to holding until all the other
required marbles were present. If the marble was not needed, it would be pushed down a
different track that took it back for recycling. Lastly, if it was an out of spec marble, it would go
in the trash pile.
ENGR 112-532
Team 18

Picture of the current marble sorter

design

Work Breakdown Structure:

Marble Marble
Card Reader Other
Dispenser Sorter

Teams 17 Teams 18 Entire task

Team 18
and 19 and 20 force

Spinning Identify Reports and

Read 4 cards
component Marble presentations

One by one Sent to right Convey

Journals
dispensing place information
to program

Integration

Final Results:
ENGR 112-532
Team 18

Overall, each of the final components of our design were very successful. Each had very

minor flaws that occurred inconsistently. For example, the inconsistency of the motors turning at

very precise angles caused problems in light sensors correctly determining marble types.

Moreover, each Design Subtask, our components were also very successful, however some

designs did not work well, each subtask brought a component that was worked efficiently and

met each requirement.

  For the first Subtask, each team in the Task Force created their own marble distributer.

After creating a table of desired characteristics for our marble sorter, along with ranking for each

characteristic, we ranked each Team’s marble distributer and picked the best ranking to improve

and incorporate into the Final Demo. Here, we chose Team 18’s distributor because its design

most effectively distributed marbles one at a time.

Subtask 2 required building the Card Reader and the initial marble sorter. Teams 18 and

20 built the Card Reader, while Teams 17 and 19 constructed the Marble Sorter. The Card

Reader, after experimenting with code, began to work flawlessly. The Reader scanned the card at

a consistent power, and took readings of the bar code every second, creating the binary array.

The Reader practically worked flawlessly, hardly ever misreading the bar codes. The marble

sorter also worked flawlessly, implementing simple size sorting methods with the tongue blades,

which lead to series of light sensors to determine the type of marble. A motor would then rotate,

allowing it to fall down the appropriate chute. Since we had such precise angles for the motor

rotations, it was difficult for the Lego motor to consistently rotate the exact angle measurement,

which caused problems in sorting the Marble.

  In the Final Demo, our entire apparatus incorporated the marble distributor, but to more

efficiently distribute one marble at a time into the sorter, we incorporating a conveyor belt with
ENGR 112-532
Team 18

notches to grab one marble every ~7 second interval. The motors were mostly consistent in the

demo, not causing many problems in the final demo. However our Card Reader misread a card

the first trial. The Second Trial the Card Reader read all the cards exactly, yet there was a typo in

our code which asked for 13 small red marbles, instead of 3 which was what the Card required.

There were some cases in which the marbles would get stuck at one junction, but they would

eventually become released and dropped into the appropriate chute. Besides that problem, our

Sorter worked very successfully, our incorporated recycle system worked flawlessly, allowing us

to continually resort marbles that were not out of spec.

Overall, our Sorter was very successful, and had very minimal issues that we could fix, or

problems with the inconsistency of the resources given to us.

References:

Our design was similar to US patent 5944233A, which utilizes a rotor affixed to “two opposed, truncated

cones rotationally mounted” to keep the materials flowing. The idea here is that by keeping the granular

material spinning, it will not be able to get backed up. To contain the marble as they are dispensed, we

built a slide out of tape that catches the released marbles and draws them down to a holding area, where
ENGR 112-532
Team 18

they will then fall off the device one by one. This is also similar to US patent 2575967A, which uses a

hopper to hold the material until it can be measured and dispensed again. A major part of our design

features a conveyor belt type device that will pick up the marbles one at a time from their holding area

and take them where they need to go with the downstream parts of the project. Our system of moving the

marbles is similar to US patent 5333795A, which uses “a high speed, normally closed tubular belt

conveyor system” to transfer granular materials long distances. After our first test with marbles, our

design seems to be working very well.

Final Design and Code Photos:

ENGR 112-532
Team 18
ENGR 112-532
Team 18