Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
50 Smart Black/Whiteboard Cleaning System
 Lan Li
Yichen Gu
 Luke Wendt design_document0.pdf
final_paper0.pdf
photo0.jpg
presentation0.pdf
proposal0.pdf
video
Problem:
Although powerpoint is widely used in presentation nowadays, black/whiteboards are still not replaceable in some situations. After a long presentation or lecture, it is very possible for the presenter to forget cleaning the board. It is OK if the board is filled with lecture notes. But if the it is confidential information, there will be a problem. Also it is a hassle for professors to clean up the black board every time it is all written.

We would like to design a cheap black/whiteboard cleaning system. By simply waving a hand at a motion sensor mounted beside the blackboard, the brush will go from one side to the pin location you previously put on, and travel back, brushes 2 times in total. More details and functionality are presented below.

Technical Details:
This project will contain three modules:

Brush module: A vertically placed brush pressed to the board.

Motor module: Sliding rail on top and bottom of the board. 2 motors on each side of the rail to drag a wire attached to the rail, to move the brush.

Control module: This module contains three different submodules.
Wave-Clean: An ultrasonic sensor on the side of board, facing upwards. When presenter wave his/her hand at the sensor, board is cleaned.
Leave-Clean: Motion sensors around the room. When no movement for 5mins, clean the board
Partial-Clean: Presenter can put a locating pin on the rail. The brush will then move from the side to the pin, and only cleans part of the board.

It will also include a small rechargeble battery pack to power the motor.

Assistive Chessboard

Robert Kaufman, Rushi Patel, William Sun

Assistive Chessboard

Featured Project

Problem: It can be difficult for a new player to learn chess, especially if they have no one to play with. They would have to resort to online guides which can be distracting when playing with a real board. If they have no one to play with, they would again have to resort to online games which just don't have the same feel as real boards.

Proposal: We plan to create an assistive chess board. The board will have the following features:

-The board will be able to suggest a move by lighting up the square of the move-to space and square under the piece to move.

-The board will light up valid moves when a piece is picked up and flash the placed square if it is invalid.

-We will include a chess clock for timed play with stop buttons for players to signal the end of their turn.

-The player(s) will be able to select different standard time set-ups and preferences for the help displayed by the board.

Implementation Details: The board lights will be an RGB LED under each square of the board. Each chess piece will have a magnetic base which can be detected by a magnetic field sensor under each square. Each piece will have a different strength magnet inside it to ID which piece is what (ie. 6 different magnet sizes for the 6 different types of pieces). Black and white pieces will be distinguished by the polarity of the magnets. The strength and polarity will be read by the same magnetic field sensor under each square. The lights will have different colors for the different piece that it is representing as well as for different signals (ie. An invalid move will flash red).

The chess clock will consist of a 7-segment display in the form of (h:mm:ss) and there will be 2 stop buttons, one for each side, to signal when a player’s turn is over. A third button will be featured near the clock to act as a reset button. The combination of the two stop switches and reset button will be used to select the time mode for the clock. Each side of the board will also have a two toggle-able buttons or switches to control whether move help or suggested moves should be enabled on that side of the board. The state of the decision will be shown by a lit or unlit LED light near the relevant switch.

Project Videos