Week 7 - Journal

Ideation

Tell us about your assignment's idea for this week. Why do you care about this idea? What inspired you? (Please include images or links to sources of inspiration)

This week I decided to make a parking sensor device, where the function is to sense the distance between the car and the obstacle using ultrasonic sensors while indicating the distance by led lights or beeping sounds from a buzzer.

Tool Chain

Which software/machines/materials did you use in the assignment? Why?

I used Arduino IDE to communicate with the Arduino UNO board and give it instructions.

I used TinkerCAD to design and simulate the circuit.

Ultrasonic sensor

LED

Sliding switch

Piezo buzzer

Design/Preparation Process

Explain the design and/or preparation process of your assignment. How did you use the tool or software to design and/or prepare your assignment before fabrication/implementation?

Circuit design CarRadar | Tinkercad

For this assignment I wanted to make a parking sensor with two modes:

The first mode is just a demonstration of the LED light and the buzzer sound.
The second mode is for sensing with the ultrasonic sensor.

First, I designed the circuit using Tinkercad and assigned:

the buzzer to 5
trig to 7
echo to 6
led to 3
the slide switch to 4

I started the code by defining the pin numbers.

Then I added the ultrasonic function to the code.

For the normal mode, the LED and buzzer will be turned on and off every 500 ms.

For the sensor mode, I added the equation to define the distance the ultrasonic reads:

Fast beeping sound (every 500 ms.) when the wall is at distance equal to or more than 30 cm, and less than 70 cm.
Faster beeping sound (every 250 ms.) when the car gets so close to the wall at distance equal to or more than 30 cm, and less than 10 cm.

Development/Implementation Process

Explain the development/implementation process of your assignment. How did you use the machine/tool to manufacture or implement the design of your assignment?

Video from sam

I used the same connections from TinkerCAD to make the circuit in the real life.

I wrote the Arduino code and I made sure everything was right by clicking "Verify", then uploaded it to the Arduino board.

I used cardboard to make my enclosure. I wanted it to look like an actual garage.

Video from sam

Overcoming Challenges

What kinds of challenges or problems did you face while doing the assignment, tutorials, or exercises? How did you solve them? Did you ask for help from an instructor or peer? Please provide a link to the tutorial or article that you used to solve your problem (if any)

I always had a problem when it comes to coding two modes, but then I took a look at our week 6 activity where we had to write the two modes for the fan and the LED until it all worked well.

Assignment Design Files

CarRadar.ino

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