Angelina Sorensen

Hello!

My name is Angelina. One of my design strengths is that I'm able to think outside the box. I love coming up with new ideas! An area for growth, on the other hand, is my patience when it comes to building and creating. I get so excited about the final product that I often don't enjoy the process as much as I would like to.

Three things I want to commit to in the documentation of my learning and projects are:

taking clear and well-edited progress pictures
describing my design process in detail
explaining even the mistakes I made along the way

Group PCB

PCB Design Sketches

Sophie and I are planning on making a PCB that looks like a cake! We would like each candlestick to be drawn out in resistors and the candle flame will be represented by a different colored LED. We would also like to add details by silkscreening but we're not completely sure how we would like that to look.. We're also still deciding the color of our PCB.

Design Board

Schematic

Final PCB Design

We decided to add a little more detail to our cake. We drew out what we wanted the decorations to look like on Rhino and then placed them on the silkscreen layer. Also, a resistors did not end up being tall enough to cover a whole candle so we moved them around a bit.

Final PCB (finally, yay!)

Here is the final cake circuitboard Sophie and I designed. Look at it all lit up. Aaaah it's so cute, I love it!

Amplifier Designs

(More than) 10 Amplifier Designs

I couldn't really help myself and I'm also very indecisive so I just posted all my designs. Some I know are not as feasible as others. My favorites are the droopy flowers, the telephone, and the stacked circles.

Final Amplifier Sketch

I decided to go big (as opposed to going home) with this project. I had a very similar strategy frosh year when I built my lamp, which was extremely complex. However, it worked out wonderfully in the end and so I have faith that I can do it again with this amplifier. One thing I'm going to have to really take into consideration is how the weight will be distributed so that my tall amplifier design can stand on its own.

Rough Rhino Design

I still need to figure out how I would like the box to look. I'm thinking of just using butt joints that are angled to achieve the trapezoidal pot look. I also still need to design the interior of the flowers so that they can actually hold the speakers because currently they are just hollow. Finally, I need to add small details like a hole for the volume and on/off switch and a place to display the temp/humidity screen. So essentially, this is a very rough first draft.

Cardboard Prototype

I only prototyped one of the two flowers because the other one is exactly the same. I tried my best to get the right dimensions, but the cardboard's lack of pliability made it difficult to curve it to the correct organic shape. For that reason, the flower looks a little fat. While prototyping I also realized that my best bet for the flower stems will be to stack a few layers of metal because I don't know how feasible it is to bend a tube while maintaining its hollow structure.

12/12/22 Amplifier Progress

Here are two of the bases for my flowers. I have also almost finished my circuit board and I have bent the metal rods that will serve as the flower stems. They're not connected to anything yet, though, so I didn't include them in this picture.

My next steps are to laser cut my flower pot pieces and glue them together, program my digital project and include it to my flower pot, fix some minor circuitry issues, and glue the amplifiers to the flower bases and stems.

I plan to come after school on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday as well as during lunch whenever I can. I believe I can do this. We're in the home stretch!

Final(ish) Amplifier 12/16/22

I made a Bluetooth amplifier in the shape of two flowers in a pot. I'm not completely done. I have some acrylic leaves to add on, and two brown acrylic pieces to cover my circuitry within the pot. I also have to glue my digital project into the slot, and cover the stems in green electrical tape. Basically, I just have to make a few little additions.

Thinking about the work you created, what are you most satisfied with this semester?

I'm very satisfied with the final design. I'm also proud that I only lost faith in myself once during the whole process, considering that my design was sort of difficult.

If you were to start over, knowing what you know, what would you do differently?

I would fix some of my gluing because it's not super well done. I also would have made the flower design a little more complicated so that it actually looks like a flower.

What is a lesson from this class that you will take with you and use in future projects?

A lesson I'm taking away is definitely my ability to understand circuits and schematics. I really learned a lot in this class, and I'm very grateful for that.

(Oh yeah, sorry for the bad picture, I didn't have time to take a picture at school. Please don't mind Alexa photobombing the pic)

Amplifier Circuitry and Schematics

Breadboard

These are all the pieces that will be on my final circuit board. There is an on/off switch, a volume dial, an audio jack, a bluetooth connecter, a microcontroller, and a random LED. During the breadboarding process, I learned about the importance of checking every wire connection supplying power to the circuit. I think the purpose of breadboarding is to collect all the pieces you will need in your final circuit board, and to get a general understanding of how your board schematics opperate

PCB Schematic and Board Design

My partner was Max, we didn't add much to the board template other than our names. The first picture is of how the final board will look, and the second picture is the board schematic that shows all the wire connections.

Practicing Python in Mu

Maya and I made all the lights on our LED circular board light up one by one. They all changed colors 2 times and then they all turned off. We didn't really follow any particular challenge, we just played around with the code. It was a good way to refresh my very limited knowledge of python.

More Python Practice (with Feather Microcontroller)

Lance and I made the Feather microcontroller display a light bouncing around the screen and changing colors randomly. We also made the four different quadrants of the microcontroller light up with different colors (that's what the image shows).

Even More Python Practice (with Feather Microcontroller + Screen)

This image shows what Amelia and I worked on in class. We programmed the digital screen to display an image of a dinosaur and text that says: "dino, hee hee"

For some reason when I took the picture a black line appeared on the dinosaur image but it's not visible if you were to look at it in real life.

Unsoldered Circuit Board

Fully Soldered Circuit Board

Here is my fully soldered circuit board. The Bluetooth WORKS!!! The PCB includes a volume dial, on/off switch for the battery and digital project, another on/off switch for just the amplifier, and an external charging port for the battery.

Digital Project

Digital Project Design

I plan to use a feather microcontroller and the small screen. I would like to display temperature and time and if I have more time to code some extra features I would love to add a graphic that goes up and down with the music and possible display the title of the song. I imagine it to be centered on the front face of the flower pot (which is the main storage unit of my amplifier) so I can easily view it when playing music.

Digital Project Final

I programmed my microcontroller to display the date and time. That's really all I had time to do since I was working on my amplifier after school and during lunch. I'm happy with how it turned out though, and I might add more coding to it later.

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