Here’s how week 11 went for us!
DAY 1
Thursday, 25/7/24
We 3D printed out the connector that would hold the opening of the bin together. This is a picture of how the opening would look like from the sideview when closed and open. The opening is labelled in red as seen below!
Also, we decided to test out the weight sensor on the actual wooden plank (a repurposed chopping/charcuterie board!) that we would put it on. However, the weight sensor appeared to be faulty as it was unable to record weight accurately at all. We tried troubleshooting by soldering all the weight sensors to a new HX711, which turned out to have solved the problem, as it was finally able to detect weight (with some error ~200g).
DAY 2
Friday, 26/7/24
Today we continued working on our weight sensor. Previously, we had used terminal blocks to connect wires between the load cells (e.g. red to red & black to black, on adjacent load cells). We found this to be rather inconvenient as the bulky terminal blocks made it difficult to neatly arrange the wires on the wooden board, and also interfered with our placement of the load cell flat on the ground. Hence, after confirming the final placements of the load cells, and the board we’d be using, we decided to solder the load cell wires together, with heat shrink around the exposed section of wire to ensure a more secure connection.
Next, we also soldered the ends of the white wires of the load cells (which were formerly soldered to the HX711) to female heads to extend the wires, enabling HX711 to lie outside of the board, rather than remaining fixed at the underside of the board.
We also measured and cut out pieces of corrugated cardboard to act as the flaps of the chute/’laptop’. Initially, we intended to use Daiso wooden planks as the chute’s flaps, which were the dimensions that the 3D printed brackets were designed for. However, we changed the material to corrugated cardboard after realising that it would be easier to cut and resize than wood. This meant that we needed to update the 3D printed brackets as well to accommodate the thinner corrugated cardboard — which we planned to do over the weekend.
