Easy Bottle Cleaner

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. 

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.

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.