It’s Alive! – Rebecca Jennifer Rashkin

The outer ring cycles through the whole spectrum over 24 hours, the second to the outer ring cycles over one hour, the inner ring cycles over 1 minute and the central flower-looking light can be controlled by the participant. This photo was taken at 9:09 AM. Don’t mind the dead button LED. This will be fixed 😅

No Regrets

For a long time, I regretting getting my bachelor’s in electrical rather than computer engineering. Often enough I have questions about software engineering design concepts that might have been answered had I chosen a different major. However, while working on ColorClock I realize that my degree gave me familiarity with electronic components and datasheets that I might not have gotten with a different undergraduate focus. And for the first time since I graduated, I sincerely have no regrets about my choice.

A lot has happened since the last post, including completely resoldering a new circuit board followed by a very sad afternoon where I was ready to give up after burning another Arduino board. But Bo came to the rescue and discovered that it was just a grounding problem.

Here is the final wiring of the circuit board. Isn’t it beautiful? 🥰

We Did It!

A couple months ago we decided to schedule a live demo as motivation to get the project finished a week before leaving. The looming date of the demo gave us the motivation to finish with exactly one weekend to spare to get ready 😵‍💫

Last weekend was the demo and it was a success! After scrambling to get it all wired up (which involved an embarrassing number of alligator clips), I threw together a slide deck that I presented to kick off the event. I added some of the slides at the end of this post for your enjoyment.

I discussed some of concepts of RGB LEDs, how a level shifter works, and explained the wiring of the circuit board. I was excited to play teacher again 👩‍🏫 Don’t mind our camping boxes and living room workbench – Photo courtesy of Stasi Silvares.

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Bo and friend discussing the meaning behind the colors – Photo courtesy of Stasi Silvares.

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We’ll be using solar to charge the batter that powers ColorClock ⚡️

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The participant will be able to sit on the bench while viewing the light display and manipulating the controls 🎮

The Final Touches

This is our last weekend before we deliver and I’m thrilled that we are really just putting on the final touches. Although I learned today that last minute software changes can be quite risky.

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I decided to change the initial colors for the the participant controlled central light, but because of the wonky logic for how the buttons interact with the colors, I got less ideal results.

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I reverted my software change and now it’s working 🥳

It’s Actually Happening!

We leave in less than a week 😶

Slide Dump

The full presentation can be found here.

I’ve included a few slides below for your enjoyment 🙂 These diagrams were created using AutoCAD.