Wednesday 10/13 (48 Days Left)

So Wednesday came around and we got down to business, as soon as I explained my semi-mysterious absence and slightly cryptic conversation with Simon. Tuesday had brought about a few changes in our design: we decided to abandon the rod in favor of gears for realizing the rotation of the visor, we were going to use the wires themselves to pull the car along the track, and we had decided that the Arduino would go along the track with the visor module itself.

Construction came with varied success. We assembled the visor and cross-shaped shading piece without issue, and connected it to the gears that would allow it to fold upwards and down. We wrestled with the track, because the screw pieces that we used to connect the top and bottom of the track were accidentally cut to slightly different lengths and because we had trouble securing the track on these screw pieces. We got them together eventually, and here are some pictures:



We then set to actuating the motors so that we could move the visor module along the track. Simon thought it best to attach the wire to the servo itself down the wire from the electrical connection to avoid putting tension on the connection itself. This proved difficult and we ran into trouble with winding the wires around the servos when one pulled the visor module towards it. Looking back, the wires as the physical connection between the module and the servos may not have been the best idea. We had planned on using fishing wire and DC motors, but as neither worked we had to change strategies. While the wires solution wasn't great, Chris managed to perform successful servo surgery on our two larger servos, allowing them to have a rotational radius of greater than 180 degrees. This, for me, was our group's (meaning Chris in this instance) most impressive accomplishment of the evening/morning. However, even this wizardry was unable to salvage our project, as it ultimately failed.

I remember being really mad that we were unable to make this project functional. I knew that we had worked particularly hard on this one, and the fact that all the other projects were functional only made it more aggravating that ours wasn't.