Monday, April 17, 2017

Blog Report Week 13 - Liam

1. Provide the updated computer drawing for your individual RG setup.
Block Diagram for Week 13 Rube Goldberg.
An updated circuit schematic for Week 13 Rube Goldberg.



2. Explain your setup.
  • In my Rube Goldberg circuit, It begins with a set of dominoes being triggered by the previous groups circuit, a domino then falls onto a rocker light-switch which allows power to flow through a 120VAC power strip, to power a heat gun with a pre-set mechanical switch. This heat gun powers a temperature sensor with a 5V power source. 
    • This hooked up to a LM324 Non-Inverting Operational Amplifier, the voltage gain         [ Av = 1 + (2000Ω / 274Ω) ] = 8.3V. The op-amp requires a voltage supply equal or greater than the gain, so it’s (V+) is 10V. 
    • The output from the Op-Amp then flows into (pin 2) of a relay, by heating up the temperature sensor it will trigger the relay within a few seconds. (Pin 1) has a 5V "fixed" power source to ensure that enough voltage and current is supplied to components after the relay. 
    • The relay then triggers a 555 timer, attached to a 74192 Decimal Counter, and then a 7447 Display Driver, which finally displays a number that counts up from 0 to 9. The D output form the 74192 will be 1 and give a voltage of about (1 - 1.5)V which is not enough to power a motor, especially with an amperage of 0.04A. So I used another Op-Amp and Relay with an additional separate power supply to power the motor when the voltage spikes at 9 seconds.
    • At 9 seconds a motor will impulsively begin to spin, and it will pull a toy car across the table using a string, the toy car will have a 5V wire taped to it and will hopefully run into a metal wire ball that i have set up. This 5V connection will help power my partner Justin's circuit. 

    3. Provide photos of the circuit and setup.


    Photo 1: My initial 120V AC power supply which
    has a switch that will be triggered by a domino,
    and then power a heat gun.

    Photo 2: A separate 12V 16A power supply.

    Photo 3: An angle to show where everything is at.
    Photo 4: Showing my motor from birds eye view.

    Photo 5: A side view of my circuits components.

    Photo 5: Showing my components
    and their wiring.

    Photo 6: The motor will pull this car with
     a 5V wire to trigger Justin's circuit.

    4. Provide at least 2 new videos of your setup in action, one being a failed attempt.
    Video 1: Updated Rube Goldberg Week 13 - Fail

    Video 2: Updated Rube Goldberg Week 13 - Success 

    5. What failures did you have? How did you overcome them?
    • One of the failures I had when making this circuit was trying to figure out how to get the 7-Segment-Display and all of its components to work properly with each other. I was able to overcome it by putting in long hours and having the tools and resources available to improvise solutions to get the counter working. For some odd reason my temperature sensor was grounded on pin 2 instead of pin 3, everything else was working somewhat correctly.
    • Another Failure of mine was getting the motor to trigger once the 7-Segment display reached the number 9 in the circuit. I was able to overcome this by using a separate power supply hooked up to a relay that was attached to an op-amp.

    14 comments:

    1. Looks like you decided to take out the PZT. I had liked that. You are manipulating the switch for the hair dryer which I like. Toy car is a good idea. Your circuit drawing is good. I am not able to judge from the photos the complexity of mechanical and electrical parts. Will talk more during the demo.

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    2. I think you're the first person I've seen to use the heat gun and its cool that you didn't let the challenge of finding a way to turn it on stop you. Im curious to hear more about how you figured out how to determine when the 74192 gives certain outputs when the count is at a certain value. Im trying to implement something similar to my circuit to add complexity. Also I was wondering how reliable your method of triggering the next group is with the toy car. I like the idea of the toy car but maybe you could use the flipper voltage device to send a pulse of voltage once the toy car is pulled through it? I'm not sure if it would be enough force to send a big enough pulse but its something to think about. But if your method does work fine then theres no need to change it. Nice job

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      1. Thank you for the feedback! If you look at a truth table chart i believe from week 7, you'll see that the 74192 outputs a 1 (True) when it counts to the number 9 in binary (1001). I don't know the exact order of the letters but D would be the first bit in the byte. We also updated our circuit around the toy car for function and fashion for the RG video.

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    3. Your circuit is probably one of my favorite ones so far. I like how you implemented a temperature sensor and a 555 timer in the same circuit. Even though the temperature sensor scared a lot of people away you made it work. The complexity of both the mechanical and electrical part is definitely there, as long as you made it work you will be in a great spot.

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      1. Thank you, it means a lot. I'm not really sure what other mechanical components I could really put in, atleast to work in with whats there right now.

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    4. WOW! This circuit looks intense. Great to see someone is implementing a heat gun and a heat sensor. Those are tricky to work with. I also like the idea of the power strip and the light switch. Way to be resourceful. I hope inspired you to use a cart with wire. You can send your points to my blackboard account at your earliest convenience.

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      1. Well, I mean how many ideas do you think Benjamin Franklin stole?

        The heat gun is unique, it was pretty fun wiring up the switch for it. I've also done this in the past, connecting a light switch to an Ethernet cable so that I could manipulate online video games when I was the server host, but that's a story for another time.

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    5. Justin and Liam,
      I like your circuit design but it seems like there is a lot that could go wrong with Liam's. I feel like the dominoes might not be strong enough to flip the switch, and I feel like the heat gun might not work properly and the 5V pulse could possibly NOT be enough to release the golf ball. Overall I like the circuit and the idea I just think it is a lot of small components that could potentially not work.

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      1. I do really like the circuit though I think its great

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      2. We implemented larger light-surface areas for pressure activated switches into both of our designs. As of today (Wednesday) we were able to successfully run both of our multiple times together.

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    6. Well done! Truly one of the more complex circuit's I've ran across. You'll have to share with me how you got your opamps and relays to work consistently. I'm curious as to how consistent the process works. Do you run into issues with the car keeping straight, even though the wheels do help I'd assume? Additionally, do the dominoes have enough "umpf" to push the button?

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      1. Thank you! Our RG process is nearly perfect now that we've managed to work 95% of the kinks out of it.

        Keeping the car straight is an issue because we're using solid/hard wire instead of threaded/flexible wire, so that definitely affects our cars path. However, we were able to put the car on a fixed path by adding some rails on the side of its forward-pulling vector. Since the car is a cheap $1 knockoff, the wheels do spin, but its more of a skidding motion lol.

        The Dominoes will be falling onto the rocker switch from about a foot above, 4/5 times this has worked. (The one time it hasn't was in front of Dr. Kaya and was because I didn't bother to line its drop accurately.

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    7. I really like your Rube goldberg. the complexity of both the mechanical and Electrical will make for a good presentation. Was it hard for you to get all the correct voltages for both Opamps, I had some issues calculating those voltages. Overall, looks really good and I look forward to seeing it!

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      1. Yes, it seems like the Op-Amps are a lot of trouble when you initially setup a circuit. My problem was attempting to increase the amount of current coming from the 74192 Decimal counter, without frying a transistor because the voltage was still too high. Instead i used a separate power source hooked up to a relay that would be triggered by an Op-Amp.

        It wasn't too hard calculating the voltages, it was pretty easy finding the resistances needed for the correct gain.

        Thank you, and your circuit as well!

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