Emmie Hou

I love to build things out of wood and metal. I've always had a passion for hands-on learning and creativity, which is why I'm so excited to make a speaker in this class. An area of growth for myself is sometimes I get ahead of myself in the design process when I dream up a design, but don't take the time to make a design plan and I end up just diving right in. Instead, I want to have a thorough plan when I'm starting my building process after designing.

The three things I want to commit to in the documentation of my learning are:

Taking lots of in-process photos
Making my page look visually appealing because I take pride in my graphic design skills
Take professional looking photos of my final products

Day 3: Eagle LED-switch-resistor schematic

finished LED-switch-resistor schematic and PCB on Eagle

8/30 PCB design ideation HW

September 1, 2023

Robot PCB design outline

Project 1 PCB Design

Board layout in Eagle

Schematic layout in Eagle

Ari and I worked on this PCB project together. We decided to make a cutout of a robot (as simple as possible). One thing I'll remember from this project is definitely the struggles we had to overcome when designing the schematics and then putting it onto the board to make the correct shape.

10 speaker designs

After getting to hear the different speakers playing music in class, I've decided that I want to use the Choice B speakers (light and loud).

Feedback grid from speaker designs

I think I'm going to make the milk carton because it's simple, but if I have time, I can add extra designs to it at the end, maybe more wood burning or something. I'm thinking about how I can incorporate the sound-syncing colors to the box.

Phase 2 Design Drawing

Rhino Design of speaker

I've decided to make the bottom box and then glue on the top parts because the angle of the press fit was too difficult to design. I'm also going to use a scrap piece of acrylic to put behind the "MILK" cutout so that it can light up with the circuit playground behind it. It's all light wood, and then the acrylic in the box.

Design feedback from class

like the clean box design
questions and concerns were about the sizing and if it would fit the speaker depth

Prototype for speaker

Breadboarding (with Bluetooth!)

Speaker PCB

board

schematic

This is our finished PCB board and schematic! Ari worked on the main power, bluetooth power, and the power indicator parts. I worked on the integrated circuit part. We added our names on the left below the audio jack as our edit.

Python worksheet #1 (with Remi, 10/27)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R6rn_6iTSjE0ltnj5DXzmrVxWbbKyo9VrD3Dl9eWbSM/edit?usp=sharing

Python worksheet #2 (with Remi, 10/31)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pOpDKMFOBk3DwzQcAt6RrAc8GBH3xnmNbPA3zrj-bu0/edit?usp=sharing

Sound-sensitive lights

This was the sound-sensitive lights. I thought it was really cool that I could play my music and it was light up based on the beat drops and percussion in the background.

Light-sensitive LED code

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-circuit-playground-bluefruit/playground-light-sensor

I did the coding for the light-sensitive LED. It was really cool that it lit up based on when I put my flashlight next to it and far away from it.

Digital Project Description

For my digital project part of my speaker, I'm going to attach a circuit playground onto the top of the inside of the speaker and program the circuit to have sound-sensitive LEDs so it lights up the inside. I also cut out the letters of "MILK" and will put some transparent acrylic behind it on the inside so the LEDs will shine through the MILK letters.

Soldered PCB circuit

unfortunately the pcb doesn't light up, but I finished soldering the parts. I'm not sure why it doesn't work, my partner Ari and I have double checked all the Eagle schematics and everything.

Soldered speaker PCB circuit (with all components)

it took a few debugging cycles to get the LED to light up, then the integrated circuit was bugged, and then bluetooth was having trouble connecting...but finally all soldered and functional!

Amplifier Build Work in Progress Documentation

this is my work in progress as of 12/12. i finished gluing all the faces together, screwing in the speakers, and hot gluing the volume knob and battery pack charging plug. i just need to finish cleaning up the gluing and sanding a few edges down. other than that, i just need to take professional final photos with the backdrop, and then document!

front side

backside with everything screwed/glued in

inside before gluing the top

Digital Project Documentation

link to github gist: https://gist.github.com/emmiehou/3e5d9ff2a862f127ce6cfd9492d1a1d2 . My goal was to create a circuit that would be able to light up based on the sound levels of the music coming out of the speakers. I did face a challenge with how to physically put it in my speaker, but it turned out just fine and I velcroed it. I learned more on how to code, and the change I made to the original code was to change the peak color value.

full code above

my change^

Final Amplifier Project Documentation

My goals for my speaker were to create something that functions correctly, and emulates the shape of a milk carton.

I was able to (mostly) successfully make my design! It does look like a milk carton, and it functions correctly. The tabs didn't work out correctly, but I think it looks great anyway. I'm most satisfied with this speaker for sure. I had dreamt up this design at the beginning of the semester when we first started introducing the final project, so I was really excited to make it. If I were to start over, I'd definitely fix the tabs of the press fit because they didn't end up fitting together. I also would change up the top of the carton because it was janky how I sanded down the edges to fit together. The panels that make the "roof" looking thing took a while to sand and jerry-rig together. Other than that, it went fairly according to plan. A lesson I learned is definitely that things take time to get correct, it won't work the first time. I had so many issues with soldering my PCB circuit, so that was really annoying to deal with for the majority of the work days. I had to get a lot of help from Leia, but fortunately, it all worked out and I ended up finishing with extra build days to spare, which I definitely was not expecting when I was resoldering and resoldering my board.

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