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)

My assignment's idea is addition to Week 6 idea.

I decided to add pushbutton and LCD screen and pushbutton to the circuit, so when the pushbutton is pressed counter will start to show on the screen.

Tool Chain

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

All tools/ software used in this week's assignment explained here.

I added to it:

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?

I simulated the circuit first on TinkerCad, then I started by adding main components on the breadboard and wired it accordingly as per the color code ( red for positive and black for negative).

I split the whole project to small parts and decided to write and test every part separately.

P.S: The available LCD on TinkerCad is different from the one I have so, I used Google search to understand wire the LCD on TinkerCad accordingly.

I used this link as reference for wiring the LCD on TinkerCad.

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?

I started the implementation with Red LED. wrote the code and turned it on.

I set the red LED as int in order to don't need to memorize the pin number.

I explained the programming method I followed in details here.

The second part (RGB, LM35 and Buzzer)

I followed the same approach as the previous part.

Wired the related components and build up on the above code.

VID_20220311_143005.mp4

Now it is time for the LCD (for me it was the hardest part)

I started with adding the LCD and pushbutton to the circuit.

Then, I included the LCD library in the Arduino IDE, added the name of the LCD, added the pushbutton as int.

In the setup section I set the LCD light to off, the pushbutton as input and moved to the loop part.

In the loop part I wanted to print the temperature readings from the LM35 sensor only in case I pressed the pushbutton other than that the LCD will remain off.

YouCut_20220311_164821554.mp4

VID_20220311_164518.mp4

For the enclosure, I used the low fidelity prototype cardboard I built in the final project proposal.

Community of Learning

Did you ask for feedback? What are the ideas that others have contributed or suggested? What was someone else’s idea that you built upon? How did you help your peers? How did your peers help you?

In this week assignment, I wanted to add minutes and hours counter to display on the LCD but I didn't manage to do it, Saeed suggested that instead of stop everything and try to do this I should try new thing instead as if I tried to do it, it might take a lot of time to figure out where is the issue and I need every time available since the diploma is not yet done

Overcoming Challenges

When you got stuck, what/who did you turn to? At what point did you have to pause to research or learn more before moving on? What are some mistakes, pitfalls, or challenges that others can avoid if they were doing this assignment?

This week level of complexity was very high.

I faced some challenges in the coding mainly.

First thing was reading from LM35 sensor, when I tried it first before competing the circuit the readings was between 270 and 275 C.

I was pretty sure it is not normal.

I searched on Google a lot with no avail, I even changed the wring and the place of the sensor then I asked on the diploma support channel on Slack and the mistake was in the setup part setting the sensor pin mode.

Instead of setting it as input only I set it as Input_pullup

Second mistake was in the pushbutton condition.

In the condition I asks the Arduino to see the state of the pushbutton if it is low then it should do something and when I uploaded the code it didn't work then I discovered the mistake.

The condition was if the analog read = low however high and low are for digital read and if I wanted analog read I should have added number instead of high and low.

Final Project

How can you use the skills and knowledge that you've acquired this week in your final project?