Week 7 - Journal

I chose it to be Smart Devices for my Work Desk  to increase my productivity

I always procrastinate in my tasks because of the not focusing in it 

and the pomodoro technique helped me a lot in doing it 

so I decided to make one with the arduino.

to know more ,visit THIS LINK

the device will be focused on detecting the user if they are near or not 

and decide to continue the timer or not .

to start the timer you press the push button and stay near the timer.

tinker cad for simulation and circuit wiring.

first starting with the wiring 

I wanted to put  some good indicators about the situation

so I added 

Output:

1- red led to indicate being in work state >>pin3

2- green led to indicate being at break >>pin4

3- buzzer to tell when the break or the work time end >>pin5

4- I2c lcd to monitor the process and to be user friendly 

SDA >>pin A4

SCL >>pinA5

the input here are:

1- the ultrasonic to detect if you are at work or not  

trigger >>pin 12

echo >>pin11

2- push button to start the timer  >>pin6

after uploading the code and placing my hand near + pushing the button 

here is the timer at work

after placing it withing the cardboard

the cardboard enclosure as box

after doing the wiring on tinkercad and determining which pin we will use for what 

I started to write the code ,starting with including the needed libraries and definigng our constant values

including <wire.h> and <LiquidCrystal_I2C.h> for the lcd sreen

and defining the type of lcd

then we define the pins in constant values

as it is shown

then we make Boolean variables for true or false states

to determine the timer for the pomodoro and the break

we use unsigned long , because time in millis will be huge so we need a very long variable to store it within

and unsigned as we won't use the negative numbers and to increase the storage of the variable .

and writing UL to determine that every value is unsigned long

""you can search what will happen if we use int variables ""

the "last buttonstate so we can use a single pulse from the push button to start the operation.

here we check if the pomodoro is running or not 

to start calculating the remaining time and show it on the lcd

weset the cursor to write the values 

and show the user if the timer is working or not

and setting the led to work if in work time 

and if we are in break time to let the green led work

finally this is the buzz function we use at the end of every duration finished

here is the the final outcome 

making the timer was a real hustle 

I was thinking of using  a for loop with delay but discovered that the delay function stops everything till the delay is done ,which is not practical at all

then I found about the millis() which calculates the time from the start of powering the arduino 

but then I needed a vey big variable to store it within

when I learned about the long variable type 

is was a series of problems which lead to each other and solving it one by one helped to complete the program

arduino forum and reddit were a huge help for me

Arduino forum 

Arduino subreddit 

my final project will use the same concepts 

for controlling the
I2c lcd, the buzzers , and led

this was a huge work for the logical thinking skill 

and using the lcd and commands

I think mastering the I2c lcd 

+ the search method 

to google the errors and find the others work and make use of it

I made a huge use of this toturial