Diary - WilleBack/MahjongTileShuffler GitHub Wiki
Diary
15.03.2018
The group was formed. Original group had 3 people; Risto, Wille, and Mishelle. Wille had an idea about MahjongTileShuffler, and we made some basic concepts regarding it. Still we decided to take couple of days if other good ideas would emerge. The final decision for the idea was to be locked down somewhere around next week.
20.03.2018
We locked down the idea. No better ideas came to anybody through the weekend.
21.03.2018
We got other participant for the group, Ville joined in since he didn't have group. Also Wille attended to the first FabLab Practice group. Other group members were not able to make it. Wille had some discussions with the mentors and got some basic principles on how we should face design.
28.03.2018
We Decided to use GitHub as our primary source for the project. Everyone was familiar with GitHub so it felt natural to go with it. Also we made our first prototype for the shuffler. First we thought it would be good as it is, but as expected when the design progress continued to go forward the prototype evolved too.
03.04.2018
Mishelle came with information that other group had only two members. She asked if she could join that group since she knew the people. We thought it's the right thing to do since it's very hard to complete this group project with two people. So Mishelle left the group and we were left with 3 people; Risto, Wille, and Ville. This was productive day in many ways, we started to realize the problems in the design progress and brainstormed for couple of hours. We came with new prototye that evolved the next day. We also started doing the mandatory PCB, which we finished the next day.
04.04.2018
The PCB was finished today, and it evolved series of trials and errors. We should've red the instructions more carefully, but instead we dove head in. All in all we got the PCB done and we thought that the trials and errors helped us understand how PCB board is made. Also our second prototype got done today, the design changed quite a bit, but we all agreed that the current approach will be better and more simplified.
11.04.2018
Today we did design for the plywood boxes with Inkscape. The boxes will be cut with lazercutter, we might have a slight issue with the cutting patterns but we will see that tomorrow when we do the test cutting for the box. We also started to solve the electronic circuit problems we might have in the design.
12.04.2018
Basic principle for electronics was made, and we made TinkerCad design for it.
For now that is just a rough image of it. We still have to figure out how we can randomly choose one servo to open and rest to stay closed. Also we need to find a solution for turning the servo only 90 degrees and turning it back to it's starting point.
25.04.2018
We managed to almost finish the wooden double box design for the shuffler. There were couple of points in the box we thought that could have a problem (too narrow cutting path for the lazer, and therefore the some parts could come off). We decided to leave the design as it is, since if some parts were to be broken it could be fixed afterwards. We also started to work more on the code and the PCB. Some basic ideas for the PCB was made but it changed almost completely the next week.
02.05.2018 - 04.05.2018
Ville had to leave to Helsinki for his job. He would continue working on the code from Helsinki. Wille and Risto decided it would be best if both focused finishing different parts of the project. Since Wille had designed the boxes with Inkscape it was natural for him to continue finishing the box and do the lazercutting. Wille cutted the parts today and the box looked good. He decided to assemble it later. Risto started working on the PCB, he made early design today but it was changed quite a lot in the follwing days. The PCB was finished on friday, and Risto took it home for some testing in the weekend.
05.05.2018 - 06.05.2018
Risto did some testing with Arduino, PCB, 9V battery, servos, and the code. Unfortunately we realized that we have some issues. From different testing it seems that the PCB is working as intended but the code is having some problems. We are all inexperienced in programming, and it seems hard to locate where the problem lies in the code. Hopefully we can come up with a solution before Tuesday.