The Tetris is finally complete. This has been a project that is several years in the making. In fact, the current seniors were Freshmen when we first build the frame for the project. Obviously, COVID played a role in the delay of the project, but a lot of credit needs to go to Senior Dylan who has spent most of the year rewiring, creating PCBs, and writing a lot of complicated code to get this thing working. We finally moved it to a new resting place in our shop for some ‘testing’ until we get final approval to mount it in the front hallway of the school. Currently, the game can be played with any smart device. Will have a more thorough writeup of the project coming soon. Images and video below.
A quick update on the Pi Radio, since it has been a few weeks when it was last mentioned. It works, however, still waiting on the code to get it to function when power is applied, rather than having to SSH into the Pi and manually start the code. My co-teacher is helping with this, so once he is able to make it work, we should be able to package everything up and finalize everything. For now, here are some photos of the volume and tuning knobs wired to the Pi.
Wanted to showcase a few projects that are happening in the shop right now. The first is from one of our sophomores, Shubh P ’24, who took the design on on his LED Light Box to another level. Shubh has put a lot of attention to detail in his project from CAD to circuitry. He introduced several types of circuitry components to the design, which include potentiometers as dials, 7 segment display, and pushbutton switches. In addition, he utilized different sized wood in his CAD model to create patterns within the framework of the structure of the box. It really turned out well. Unfortunately, when taking photos of it today, there was a minor glitch in the coding, so he is going to fix the issue and I will post some more photos below.
In addition to the light box, Prince A ’23 is working on updating an older project from a previous student, a bluetooth speaker. The circuitry for the project is being modernized, as is the speaker box. Below you can see some test fitting of speakers in cardboard.
And lastly, Clark B ’23 and Daniel R ’22 are working on getting our traffic light fully functioning. Clark has been making circuit boards on our Bantam Tools mill and writing code to make the light work in unison with the school’s bell system. You can see his array of relays below in blue. Daniel has designed a connector to fit the traffic light on an old tv stand. We decided to print the connector out of a carbon fiber filament for strength, and after some trial and error, we are pretty happy with the final result. You can see it below in black.
The Stop Light project continues with Junior Clark B. ’23 working fastidiously each day. Clark had the code working on a breadboard, and has spent time using Eagle to create a custom PCB on our Bantam Tools PCB mill. The process of learning how to create a pcb in a CAD/CAM software such as Eagle is very difficult, so kudos to Clark for working through it. As we have found, however, the first attempt at creating a board is usually not the final board – as it tends to take a few efforts before the final working prototype is complete.
When the pcb was coupled together with the relay for high voltage and the light, everything turns on, just now exactly when we want it to. There is probably an error in the code, so Clark needs to spend some time debugging. Still, it’s very close to working properly, ie. following our school schedule, and we have found a stand for it, having repurposed a rolling TV stand that was being thrown away by the Media Tech shop. Hopefully we will be able to present the final version soon. A few in process photos below.
Worked on the Pi Radio today. Needed to do some soldering to create a 3.5 TS audio jack to a 2 pin connector for an amplifier. I used a Raspberry Pi as a 5v power source since it was just sitting at my desk. The audio jack is plugged into my computer speakers and is now playing sound through the speaker in the Emerson radio.
Next thing to do is make sure the code on the Raspberry Pi is working correctly and plug the audio jack into it. I will make final connections for the digital encoders and then take everything apart of repaint the casing. Getting very close. Here is a short video of some audio coming from the radio.
