efflorescence

Team Health and Organization

We talked about how we’re organizing our project and maintaining team health. Part of that is beginning all meetings with person-focused “red, yellow, green” (for a check-in) and then a project-focused standup before we begin what we need to work on. We also talked about who can commit what time right now and decided that a moderate grave is appropriate for us as a team.

firmware

We first modified the Blink example to blink five times fast when something is within about a foot and a half of the IR distance sensor. Code that runs the servo (found on our github as OpenClose.ino) was created as part of testing the first pass blooming flower. The modified Blink.ino and OpenClose.ino were combined into the aptly named Sprint1Integrate.ino very simply (with all initializations and setup of both files, then replacing the “blink five times fast” code with the “move the servo” code).

Additionally, we made a skeleton of the website with Github Pages and discovered that it’s very difficult to reliably embed images with this framework. Future website will probably use something else but documentation maintenance remains here for now.

Electrical

We used a servo to rotate the center of the flower, either pulling the petals towards it so it closes or pushing the petals outwards so it blooms. We implemented motion detection with an IR sensor, which told the servo to rotate when something came within about fifteen inches of the sensor.

Mechanical

We made a flower that blooms. It is made of Styrofoam. Its hinges are made of electrical tape. It spins open with a servo motor that is connected to the petals with string and coffee stirrers.

We began experimenting with different methods of opening and closing our flowers. While Googling and discussing, several very quick sketch models were produced from sticky notes and paper. Inspiration was drawn from metal steamers and other online videos of mechanical blooming flowers. After a bit of testing, we decided that we would use a rotating motion to pull the petals in as the servo spun.

The Iteration 1 flower used styrofoam and electrical tape hinges. It spins open with a servo motor that is connected to the petals with string and coffee stirrers.