Gabriel Wong

Hello Post

A design/engineering strength

An engineering strength of mine is probably my ability to persist and adapt through mistakes that I make along the process.

Area for growth

An area of growth for me would probably be my lack of experience and skill with coding, and my mindset that comes along with not being particularly good or enthused with something.
At least three things I want to commit to in the documentation of my learning and projects.

I commit to being on top of my work and not procrastinating along the process.
I also would like to commit to organizing my work properly
I commit to putting consideration and effort into my documentation process to make it easy to understand

Circuit Board Design Choice

Our group chose the pokeball design. It is pretty simplistic and we also both like pokémon. We think it's a nice to start with something simplistic to start our LED-making process.

Shaped PCB Design

My group, George and I, made a circuit board and schematic for our "pokeyball", inspired by pokemon's pokeball. Our board color choice is black and we also chose half and half red and white LED lights. Something I will remember about printed circuit board design is that the schematic and the board itself don't need to be the same formatting. Another thing I'll remember is that the positive side of the battery should always face the switch because electricity flows from positive to negative in a conventional circuit.

Speaker Prototypes

The designs that I find the most interesting are starred.

Feedback on Starred Ideas

The clear speaker design is unique and different from most designs but it seems to be a bit messy and not the most aesthetic.

The clock/speedometer idea seems really cool and it could look clean but it's a bit ambitious and could be time consuming.

Design Phase 2 Sketch

Here is my more detailed design sketch. I dropped the idea of a speedometer to track decibels due to lack of resources and time. I think this design is pretty simple but the light/sound sensitivity will be the more ambitious part. In general I want to make something that doesn't look like anything else because I think a speaker like this is creative in itself

Rhino Model

Speaker dimensions finished, added a wave design

Prototype

What is your idea? My idea is to make a fairly simple designed speaker but with some light and dark blue acrylic waves on top to fit the vibe of the music. Although you can't see it here, I plan on most of my project relying on lights for uniqueness. Something I learned from my prototype is that the waves that I had in rhino were a bit too long and may need to be trimmed to look cleaner. Yes. I'm planning on resizing the waves on top, but also thinking about how the lights could more effectively be incorporated into my project. Maybe I'll add vertical light sticks but also attach lights on the waves too so they partially light up when the volume is high enough.

Breadboard

I now understand how wires connect better and how to operate a breadboard in general, I also understand that if wires are touching they won't work.
I'm still confused about how the knob connects to the speaker because when I turned the knob it didn't do anything to the sound.

PCB Design and Schematic

I worked with Nola to create this PCB and Schematic. I learned to not move around the parts so much because the sound could get muffled as a result of too many wires overlapping.

Unsoldered PCB Board

Digital project visual and description

For my digital project, I'm thinking of creating a box that has led lights on it that light up, change colors, and in general correlate to the volume. I'm gonna use the M4 microphone in order to pick up on the sound difference. What microcontroller and (if applicable) additional electronics will you use? I'm thinking the project could be part of my speakers. I'm thinking having led lights around my speakers in a circle could be pretty cool. I want to use my microcontroller to program a certain amount of lights correlating with the sound and kind of looking like a decibel meter in a cool pattern with circles around the speakers.

Finished Shaped PCB Board

I worked with George, and our original idea was to do a pokéball but we didn't want to risk getting copyrighted so we changed the design up a little. I'm happy with the product and I enjoy the design of our led lights, the only thing I'd change for next time is putting the resistors on the bottom to make it look a bit cleaner.

Soldered Amp Circuit

Enclosure Build Process

Right now I've finished the speaker design and am trying to create another design to house my digital project. I would think connecting the two enclosures in a creative way would really up the design. I still need to format the box correctly and make sure the measurements are right for my LED light rings, and then start using the CNC Router to cut the wood and maybe use the 3D printing Machine for my digital project.

What did you make?

I made a pretty simple yet polished design with two speakers. There's a knob on the back to control the sound, and it's fairly portable.

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

Reflecting on the work this semester, I'd say the thing I'm most satisfied with is probably the look of my speaker. I was having trouble settling on a design for my speaker earlier on and should've planned ahead of time, but honestly now that I think it over, the speaker looks more polished and cleaner to me without a creative design. Another thing I'm proud of is that I didn't beat myself up for having a basic speaker, because I got what I wanted and had fun along the way.

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

If I were to start over with the things I know now, I'd definitely prioritize the digital project over the physical stuff, because that's where the real planning is. I realized too late that the physical speaker was pretty simple to set up and I didn't need to think much - so I definitely would have put more brainpower into this project to make it my own thing.

What did you learn this semester that will likely still be with you 2 years from now?

Something I learned this semester that will help me 2 years from now is that I really enjoy watching those tech innovation videos and want to understand the developments in tech and being able to spot a winning idea. It can definitely help with my strategy and my own work/passion projects. Another thing that I learned the hard way is that every second counts, and I need to be strategizing more often and hold myself accountable, especially when the workload is more personalized and loose.

If you didn’t finish, what held you back?

Something that held me back was the lack of actual planning during the semester. I want to say it was complications with my LED lights and the uniqueness of the route I was taking, but honestly I could've accounted for that with better time management.

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