Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
26 Simplifying Part Access
 Aidan Yaklin
Matheu Fletcher
Tejas Aditya
 Gregory Jun design_document2.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
other1.jpg
other2.jpg
photo1.jpg
photo2.jpg
presentation1.pdf
proposal2.pdf
video
# Problem
PCB designs, even at the prototype/hobbyist level, can use a significant number of small passive components. Typically, these components are packaged in a reel of paper/plastic “tape” with cutouts for each component and a removable film to hold the components inside the tape. The film can be peeled back to remove a few, but it is very easy to accidentally peel it too far and lose a lot of parts. Thus, the preferred way of working with tape-and-reel packaging is to cut the tape to the required length for the project, leaving the film intact on the rest of the reel.

This in itself poses a problem, though. If a project needs more than a few of the same part, manually counting to find the cut point becomes very tedious.

# Solution:
A way to approach this problem would be designing a modular system that the end user can request a specific number of parts from, and it feeds that many out. This can be accomplished by a tileable design where each tile is a box that holds a reel of the desired components on a spindle, which is turned by a motor, and the sections are cut by a motorized blade.
To confirm that the correct number of components are dispensed, sensors can be utilized to count the components.

### Devices:
- Microprocessors
- IR Sensor
- Motors for spindle
- Motor for blade
- Power delivery
- Front end (whether web or on screen controls).

## Actuators:
- Stepper motor to move the tape https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10551.
- Secondary motor/solenoid on a linkage to cut the tape

## Component counting:
To count the individual components, we will make use of an IR photo interrupter (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/sharp-socle-technology/GP1S093HCZ0F/720401 or similar), counting the sprocket holes in the reel. We need to see if this will work with clear plastic tape.

## Power:
- The steppers need 12V, 400mA each and we will have 3 stepper motors for the system.
- Logic needs 3.3V power at 250mA or so.
- Additionally the motors (or solenoids) for the blade will also require a similar amount of power as the steppers.
- This estimate puts our power consumption at about 29W when moving all of the actuators simultaneously with 3 modules. We can support additional modules at this power target by ensuring that at most 3 modules can be actuated at a time.

## Software
- If using a web front end, provide the web page for use.
- Keep track of the components dispensed so far, processing the data from the IR sensor and continuing to tell the motors to feed more components if not yet finished.
- Once finished, tell it to cut off the components (might need to add security measures depending how blade is enclosed)

## Box:
The primary portion of the box for holding the reel could be 3D printed, or in part cut out of acrylic for visibility.

## Control Box:
- ESP32 main controller - provides user interface and sends commands to the modules.
- Power/logic distribution - connectors for power and data to the reel modules.
- Display to select components and quantities - (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/newhaven-display-intl/NHD-C12832A1Z-NSW-BBW-3V3/2059235 ), rotary encoder with button and numerical keypad to interact with the system and enter spacing values.

## Reel modules:
- ATMega328p reel controller - takes serial (I2C possibly) commands from the control box and moves the actuators to spool out the right quantity and also move the blade to cut the tape. Also measures the sprocket hole locations to ensure proper component alignment.
- Stepper control and motor control electronics are also present to power the actuators.

# Criteria for Success:
- The system accurately measures and provides the correct number of requested components. Cutting location should be accurate within +/- 1mm.
- The system is easy to use, allowing for a user to request a specific number of components and have it fulfilled within a minute (assuming a reasonable count, not say 100). The tape actuator should be able to attain a feed rate of at least 5mm/s.
- Said system is affordable, especially compared to industrial options at roughly $200.
- The system is modular, with which a newly assembled module can be added in 10 minutes.

VoxBox Robo-Drummer

Craig Bost, Nicholas Dulin, Drake Proffitt

VoxBox Robo-Drummer

Featured Project

Our group proposes to create robot drummer which would respond to human voice "beatboxing" input, via conventional dynamic microphone, and translate the input into the corresponding drum hit performance. For example, if the human user issues a bass-kick voice sound, the robot will recognize it and strike the bass drum; and likewise for the hi-hat/snare and clap. Our design will minimally cover 3 different drum hit types (bass hit, snare hit, clap hit), and respond with minimal latency.

This would involve amplifying the analog signal (as dynamic mics drive fairly low gain signals), which would be sampled by a dsPIC33F DSP/MCU (or comparable chipset), and processed for trigger event recognition. This entails applying Short-Time Fourier Transform analysis to provide spectral content data to our event detection algorithm (i.e. recognizing the "control" signal from the human user). The MCU functionality of the dsPIC33F would be used for relaying the trigger commands to the actuator circuits controlling the robot.

The robot in question would be small; about the size of ventriloquist dummy. The "drum set" would be scaled accordingly (think pots and pans, like a child would play with). Actuators would likely be based on solenoids, as opposed to motors.

Beyond these minimal capabilities, we would add analog prefiltering of the input audio signal, and amplification of the drum hits, as bonus features if the development and implementation process goes better than expected.

Project Videos