IntelliCube

Front view of the IntelliCube, without power on, with house icon facing camera.

This project is a productivity tool to help me stay focused at my desk. It supports 6 modes (Home, Timer, Habit, Game, Zen, Settings) that can be changed using the cube that sits on the base. Each mode can be interacted with using the LCD screen and rotary encoder with pushbutton. The base also has an LED strip that displays a different color depending on the active mode.

Right wall of Intellicube. Rotary encoder and arduino ports can be seen in wall.

Backside view of Intellicube base. LED strip cables are connected through a small slot.

Image shows corner of base (from below). 2 LED strips are connected at 90deg with wires and solder.

Soldering LED strip connections at 90deg.

Image shows a cube with faces and engravings. The house, moon and timer icons can all be seen

Cube with mode engraving and encoding on each side.

Image shows IntelliCube from above. Base is lit up blue with raindrops on the LCD screen. The cube is sitting on top of the base with a moon icon facing the camera

Topfacing image of IntelliCube turned on to zen mode. Blue light is emitted from the LED strip.

View of open base from below. Top right, Arduino fixed using a popsicle stick and port. Cables attached from phototransistors to breadboard on right wall. Power row in the middle provides power to all components.

IMG_6251.MOV

In this video, I show how to turn on a timer. I switch modes by turning the cube, and setting the timer with the rotary encoder and button. I then switch to setting mode to turn on and off the light. Finally, I switch to Zen mode.

Process

Image of whiteboard. Different 2x2 patterns are drawn each mapping to a number between 1-6. To the right is written a list of different possible modes.

Initial concept ideation. Mapping cube face patterns to different modes.

Image focused on a breadboard. 4 Phototransistors are wired up in a square formation. In the background, a marker and LCD screen can be seen

Initial prototyping phototransistors. Ensuring that I can read light and dark spots on a wooden cube.

Image of a demo circuit. Shows wooden block on breadboard. A bunch of wires are going out to arduino, rotary encoder and lcd display. In the background a keyboard can be seen

Raw working demo with basic modes and rotary endoder interaction.

Image shows a pile of laser cut pieces of wood. scattered on a table

Laser cut all pieces of device. Ready for assembly.

Image shows 2 pieces of LED strips being soldered together. One strip is taped to the table

Soldering LED strips together at 90° angles. Strip will be placed around the perimeter of the base facing down.

Complete wiring of components. Hot glued the photo transitors into sockets. Bolted the LCD screen and rotary encoder into the designated walls of the device.

When wiring all components into the base, I took a while to come up with a clean and space-efficient layout for all components and wire. I wanted to make sure that if I had made a wiring mistake, I could easily debug and fix the issue. The layout I ended up with worked and used the available space well. This allows me in the future to add internal components if needed.

Another challenging part of the process was soldering the LED strips together. I wanted to make sure that they fit underneath the overhang I designed without being visible to the user. For this to work, I had to make the corner connections as small and condensed as possible. Soldering such small wire proved to be extremely difficult.

Discussion

I really enjoyed how my project turned out and the overall response from the critique. One student mentioned that it would be easier to associate the active mode with the face if the cube had a deeper cavity to sit in. Looking back, I can understand that the forward-facing side of the cube may incorrectly be interpreted as the active mode due to the high visibility of the face when looking head-on instead of from above. I think this could be a good idea to improve on. This improvement would come with additional complexity from CAD design and space allocation in the base container. Another student appeared to be confused by the color the base was displaying because there "are so many" colors. This may also be caused by the lack of correlation to the mode itself. When designing the light aspect of the box, I was not considering making any explicit association with colors and modes. Since this was designed for myself, I chose colors I liked and thought best fit each mode. The goal was to make it easier to differentiate the modes from afar. I am very happy with how the project turned out. Throughout the process, I had a vision of how I wanted it to look and act. With much uncertainty on how I was going to execute, I was prepared to remove features that I was not able to implement. I believe this project showed my abilities in physical computing as well as my ability to ideate new ideas. Early on, I struggled with Fusion360 to design components and sketches. Once I understood the basics, it was relativly easy to CAD and design the base and box. Learning how to lasercut and engrave also came with challenges and early failures. I enjoyed the software aspect of the project, thinking about how to properly architect the program with an unfamiliar setup/loop model. Next time, I would plan from the very beginning. Determine out all modes, exact behavior, and icons. In addition, make the interaction as smooth as possible, building the deeper cavity inspired by one of the critiques made. However, I did think it was nice to have new ideas come up during the development of the project. In the future, I would like to continue working on this project on the software side. I plan on implementing many overall optimizations to reduce the build size and add complex modes/features.

Technical information

https://github.com/cwesterink/intellicube

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