Real-Life Status Monitor

Next year I'm living in a house with four other people. As such,  I want to be able to display if I'm busy, sleeping, out of the house, or free -- without texting everyone every single time. This display gives me a whimsical and analog way to communicate my status by selecting a laser-cut card and pushing it up, showing what I'm doing through four easy-to-understand icons. 

Process

Manufcaturing this device required me to limit play as much as possible while also pushing just how much tolerance I can have. To accomplish this, I gave myself at most 1mm between each piece and kept every moving part completely separate, relying on mechanical limits and paths not intersecting at all instead of relying on the software side. One example is how I offset the bottom pushing mechanism so that the laser-cut carriage and cards could glide along the bottom without getting caught on any edge. I also made the housing just wide enough to stop the carriage at both ends so that I only needed to hard code two stops instead of four.

Discussion

One thing that stuck with me from the crit was "I’m wondering if there are other ways to make use of the space of the housing. Since the mechanism is tall, could you shorten it? I also think it would be more visually interesting if you could see the mechanism through the housing (like by using clear acrylic panels)." Although I can't really shorten the box by too much since I need to fit at least four inches underneath the carriage, the idea of doing something else with the space got me thinking. There is a lot of empty space, and I don't need to be conformed to the box shape. Perhaps i can do a little inset and decorate, like making the structure seem more like a house or adding labels. Another piece of feedback that I really agree with is that "The physicality really lends something to the display of the information." I pivoted near the start of the project to a purely physical display because I wanted to stay away from the ease and convenience that an LED color change or press of a screen brought. Rather, I wanted to push the idea that since we all physically share the space in the house, the project should add to that space physically as well. 

Regardless of completion, I am very happy with the results. I spent a good four hours brainstorming and figuring out how the mechanism would work, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find out almost everything worked first try. With so many moving parts, I thought that something would go wrong, but everything was very easily adjustable. However, I wish I had more time to work on the final result, as well as make a wireless way to communicate between a physical button and the device instead of using serial. I found that I enjoyed using laser cutting more than I imagined. My classes end at 5, so I ended up not having time to 3D print a lot of my parts and had to laser cut instead. I found that using the laser cutter gave me a level of speed and precision that 3D printing could not offer, so I ended up changing a lot of my more experimental or underdeveloped designs to laser cut for iterative purposes. The cut wood also looked prettier, in my opinion.  Due to lack of time, I also ended up removing LEDs completely and changing edge-lit acrylic to cut-out wood panels, which made everything a lot more consistent. This was probably the better option out of the two. However, I did spend too much time messing around with hot glue and superglue, and I should've built an easier way to snap components together. Overall, I should've given myself two days to print and moved everything up. Given more time, I'd like to house everything in wood and make it more decorative, and maybe make cards for everyone.

Technical information

/*

Real-Life Location Monitor

Takes a Serial input and maps it to a servo, which moves to a set location.

A second servo then pushes the card out.

pin mapping:

Arduino pin |   role | description

___________________________________________________________________

5     output  attached to pushing mechanism

3     output  drives the carriage mechanism

Code released to the public domain by the author, 4/4/26

Timothy Yang, tyang3@andrew.cmu.edu

*/

#include <Servo.h>

Servo slideMotor;

Servo pushMotor;

const int SLIDEMOTORPIN = 3;

const int PUSHMOTORPIN = 5;

int keystroke;

void setup() {

  // put your setup code here, to run once:

  slideMotor.attach(SLIDEMOTORPIN);

  pushMotor.attach(PUSHMOTORPIN);

  Serial.begin(9600);

  pushMotor.write(20);

}

void loop() {

  if (Serial.available()>0){

  keystroke = Serial.read();

  switch  (keystroke) {

      case '1':

        // Action A

        stayUp(1);

        break;

      case '2':

        // Action B

        stayUp(2);

        break;

      case '3':

        // Action C

        stayUp(3);

        break;

      default:

        break;

    }

  }

}

void position(int pos) {

  int value;

  if (pos == 1) value = 43; //furthest

  if (pos == 2) value = 80;

  if (pos == 3) value = 120;

  if (pos == 4) value = 180; // closest

  slideMotor.write(value);

  delay(1000);

}

void stayUp(int pos) {

  pushMotor.write(20);

  delay(300);

  position(pos);

  pushMotor.write(160);

  delay(300);

}

void pop(int time) {

  pushMotor.write(160); //up

  delay(3*time);

  pushMotor.write(20); //down

  delay(time);

}