W.A.T.T.
Identify: Our Problem Statement and Survey
Our problem Statement: The U.S. is experiencing more power outages globally than any other industrialized nation. Blackouts will happen more frequently and 58% of the people we surveyed said they are not prepared with a generator. In the meantime these people do not have lighting in their house in bathrooms and kitchens, and it's a safety hazard until power comes back on.
Identify: Our Research
We searched through a lot of books, our most helpful ones were How LEDs Work by James Roland, How Batteries Work (Connect with Electricity) by Victoria G. Christensen, How Circuits Work By James Bow. We also went through websites like, Healthy Housing Reference Manual, Leviathan In-pipe turbine, and Leviathan Energy. We looked at turbines like the 10W Water Turbine Generator. We went on YouTube and looked at a video called How To Make Simple 12v Battery Charger Circuit At Home. We went on field trips like going to WeEnergies to learn about generating power, Agrowtek to learn about circuits and how they were made, and ATC to learn about transmission lines
Design - the Concept: Using the Benkatina Turbine in W.A.T.T. (Water Activated Turbine Technology)
The Benkatina turbine fits into pipes and deals with variable water flow. It is described in patent US20110188990A1. We plan to install the benkatina turbine in house pipes in the kitchen and bathroom to generate power. We decided to use a 5V output benkatina turbine. We will then take 5V and route it to an energy conversion box. This conversion box stores energy in batteries until a blackout happens. The energy will be routed into LED strips on the backsplash to light it up while waiting for power to go back on. People who can't afford a generator will benefit from this device.
Design: The Plan
Phase 1: Make a system diagram and check it with an electrical engineer and a plumber
Phase 2: Purchase parts
Phase 3: Wire the Benkatina Turbine and LED strip together and see if the LEDS light using an outside hose
Phase 4: Measure the electrical characteristics of each part of the system using test equipment
Phase 5: Hook it all together
Phase 6: Get feedback from users and experts
Create: First prototype!
We finally made a working prototype! Aylin, Sullivan, Zander, Coach Scott, and Coach Janet worked together to make a first prototype with a working Benkatina Turbine and LED Strip!
Check out our videos here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sWzNfySu0d7_YHJuAZBqEEMC_FavwZm3/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UtLNnXrq2Cuepwl3IozPrKuHNdNgu5a6/view?usp=sharing
Testing the Circuit
Elizabeth and Jonathan used a Multimeter and a Photometer to measure the voltage and make sure the circuit worked. Eythan and Aylin measured the current to see how many LED's (Light Emitting Diodes) could light up and how bright they could be.
Part of the turbine that connects it to the pipe broke off.
Improving Pipe Attachments
Sullivan and Zander worked on the pipe attachments to the benkatina turbine. We found out the benkatina turbine could break if the water attachments twisted the input or output.
One of our improvements is to enclose the turbine and its flexible pipe attachment points in a box so that the user never twists the turbine ends. The user only ever can twist the flexible pipe.
Iterate: Sharing our solution with professionals and improving it
We shared our solution with a plumber, engineers, and users to see how we could improve our solution. Our survey is out now for people to give us feedback on our current design! W.A.T.T. Sharing Feedback
From this feedback, we started improving our project. This is the stuff we are learning as we are iterating
3D Modeling with Fusion 360
How to talk to a 3D printer and 3D Printing (how to fix 3D models with sandpaper)
Building and Plumbing codes
What users like and ways they could break our design
How to calculate how long the LEDs will light up and how to improve that
Communicate: Our impact and creating our project skit!
We shared our solution at the Waukesha scrimmage on October 29th!! The judges gave us a lot of great feedback. We also shared our idea with classmates and teachers.
Our first regional competition was on November 13th, in downtown Milwaukee. We competed in regionals and we got first place! We moved onto sectional competition.
Our sectional competition was on December 10th. We won the Excellence in Engineering award and first place robot game award. We moved onto state!
Our state competition was on February 4th, at Madison College. We won first place champions award and moved onto the FIRST World Championship which is in Houston, Texas!
Here's a video showing our prototype hooked all together! We iterated it to look more like something you would buy in a store.