Easy Bottle Cleaner
Project Description
The team was tasked to design and build a Portable Ed Automation & eNlightenment Tool (PEdANT), which is a device that semi-automates one key aspect of life in a motor home.
Solution
Reusable water bottles are a convenient, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly way for Ed to stay hydrated in and around his motor home, but require regular cleaning from constant daily use. This maintenance can be time consuming, easy to neglect, and difficult to complete. These are burdens that Ed should not have to face in his retirement.
Easy Bottle Cleaner semi-automates the water bottle cleaning process, providing continuous feedback and an intuitive design that can be performed on varying water bottle sizes in less than 60 seconds. The product is compact, constructed of press-fit Duron panels, powered by a 12V supply, and offers the user several forms of feedback in the form of cleaning progress LEDs, scrolling state prompts, motor speed, and a passage of time servo time dial. The team spent $65.36 on the product's development, using 58 distinct mechanical and electrical components.
How It Works
When turned on, the machine begins in a Welcome state, prompting the user to press the START button.
The START button moves the Easy Bottle Cleaner into the Waiting Speed state, prompting the user to set the Speed Dial to determine motor speed, then press the SPEED button.
The SPEED button initiates a three second countdown that spins the cleaning shaft and moves the machine into the Running state.
Once the brush is spinning, the user should move their water bottle down around the cleaning brush and shaft to trigger the reflectance sensors on the tower.
The cleaning process is split into three sections - Section1, Section2, and Section3 - each of which have their own reflectance sensor and progress LED.
As the water bottle moves down the shaft, it will trigger reflectance sensors that tells the machine which section it is currently in, displaying that section on the front display.
All section progress LEDs start as RED, and will turn YELLOW as their associated reflectance sensor is triggered for the first time.
These yellow section progress LEDs will remain yellow until the water bottle has remained in that section for cumulative time of ten seconds, at which point it will turn GREEN.
The cleaning process continues to run until all three sections of the bottle have been cleaned for ten seconds, turning all three section progress LEDs green, displaying COMPLETE on the front display, then returning to the Welcome state.
Powering On
Welcome State
Waiting Speed State
Countdown
Section1 Triggered
Section2 Triggered
Section3 Triggered
All Sections Complete
Resetting Features
If at any point there has been no user input for 20 seconds, the machine will transition to an Incomplete state. This state indicates that the past wash was performed in a way that did no fully clean the water bottle, and the process should be repeated.
While in this state, INCOMPLETE WASH scrolls on the front display twice, then the system returns to the Welcome state with all of the section progress LEDs reset to red.
If the water bottle is moved off of the cleaning brush after the section reflectance sensors has been triggered, the system allows for a three second grace period - which we called the Yuye timer - that provides the user the opportunity to move the bottle back down into the first section and continue the wash.
If the three second Yuye timer expires, then the machine will move into the Incomplete state as described above.
Core Functionalities
Final Product
Walkthrough.MOVGems of Wisdom
Planning
Start the project with a simple and fundamental idea of functionality–you can always add complexity later.
Frequently benchmark your team's progress with the timeline to ensure the team is on track.
Keep an immediate and constant line of communication within the team so that every team member can stay up-to-date.
Electrical
Check twice, solder once. Make sure that any connections being made are to the intended terminals.
Practice simple wire management techinques–tape tags, braiding, color coordination.
Ensure you have enough length on wires to be able to move components around for debugging and wire management, but not so much that it becomes a nest and unmanageable.
Mechanical
Keep the mechanical as simple as possible. Intricate mechanics will distract from electrical and software complexities.
Design for easy deconstruction when problems arise.
Ask people to use your design before the final showcase–chances are something intuitive to your team will not be intuitive to someone seeing the product for the first time.
Software
Begin services with the most basic form of functionality to confirm fundamentals and then add complexity.
Ensure everyone agrees on the use of SourceTree.