Monday, April 17, 2017

Week 13

 Muhannad's Rube Goldberg





1. Provide the computer drawing for your individual RG setup.




picture 1.1: drawing for circuit
Picture1.2:drawing for mechanical contraption. 


2. Explain your setup.
Mu set up starts with force sensor that is connected to 555 timer, 555  timer will be connected to 5 v source and the output of the timer will be  connected to the Decimal counter 74192, then I connected the decimal counter to display driver to turn on 7-segment and to the XOR gate to turn on the motor. Connecting LED to the XOR so when the motor on, the LED will be on. I used transistor so when the the 7-segment reaches four, there will be enough current to turn the motor on and when the motor is on, it will pull a string that is connected to the gate in bottle of water, when the gate is released, the water will go through a pipe to other bottle that is attached to a balance, so when the bottle is full he ball will go up and it will through a tube to hit some dominos.





3. Provide photos of the circuit and setup.

photo 3.1: picture of the circuit

photo 3.2: picture of the circuit

photo 3.3: picture of the circuit
photo 3.4: picture of the circuit


photo 3.5: picture of the circuit
photo 3.6: picture of the mechanical contraption.


photo 3.7: picture of the mechanical contraption.




4. Provide at least 2 videos of your setup in action (parts or whole), at least one being a failed attempt.




                                                     video 4.1: shows how circuit works

                                              Video 4.2: an attempt of the project.

5. What failures did you have? How did you overcome them?

some of the failures I had is that my XOR wasn't sending enough voltage and that was hard to figure so i was trying to disconnect all components and measure XOR output alone but when i took LED light out, I measured the voltage and it went up. To overcome this problem, i Put the LED light in another XOR gate and I used transistor to increase the current that is going to the motor. Also, another failure is that how to connect the string on the motor to the gate on the first bottle and that I am trying to figure it out, but I used a glue gate and attach it to bottle of water so when the bottle goes down, the gate will open.



 Lucas’s Rube Goldberg





1. Provide the computer drawing for your individual RG setup.




Picture 1.1 shows the schematic of my original circuit 

Picture 1.2 shows the schematic of my mechanical part of my machine 



2. Explain your setup.

 As the force sensor is pressed the voltage is sent through the Opam where it is increased enough to switch the relay which then powers the 555 timer which then starts the counter which sends a signal to the driver to display numbers 0-9 on the display, and it also sends a signal to the XOR gate which will be set up to activate the LED between numbers 4-9 which would trigger the photosensor to decrease its resistance and allow the motor to run.
The machine is a three step down ramp where a golf a ball is released down the ramp when the motor is activated and pulls open the gate to the ramp the ball then exits the ramp and fall into a cup which is attached to a string when the cup falls the pull then pulls on a platform that then makes dominos fall over leading to the next circuit. 




3. Provide photos of the circuit and setup.
Picture 3.1 shows picture of circuit 

Picture 3.1 shows picture of circuit 

Picture 3.1 shows picture of three step ramp 

Picture 3.1 shows picture of motor and starting gate 

Picture 3.1 shows picture of the cup pulley and the platform 





4. Provide at least 2 videos of your setup in action (parts or whole), at least one being a failed attempt.


Video 4.1 shows a failed attempt force sensor did not activate the circuit
Video 4.2 shows a successful run of the circuit but the motor was to connected 




5. What failures did you have? How did you overcome them?



I faced a problem with getting the 555 timer to work and activate the rest of my circuit so I decided to skip the digital circuit and just have the relay go straight to two 7 segment display which would give a read out of "GO". I also faced a problem with the PhotoSensor, so i decided to use a transistor instead running a 11 volt source through a resistor then to the collector on the transistor and the 5 volt from the relay to the base of the transistor. Lastly I ran the emitter output to the motor.


Group Rube Goldberg

1. Group task: Explain your group RG setup.

To connect our Rube Goldberg machines we used Lucas's RG first after his releases the ball into the cup and falls to the floor the cup and the ball will hit Muhannad's force sensor to trigger his RG to start.


2. Group task: Video of a test run of your group RG.
                                                               Video 2.1: failure attempt.

                                              Video 2.2: another failure attempt.

11 comments:

  1. Muhannad,
    If you are still having trouble with your XOR gate output, you could try to use a transistor and hook up your XOR gate output the base and use that as a switch so you can direct more current to your DC motor. I know my setup was having similar issues and that fixed my problem.

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  2. That is a good idea to use the 7 segment display to show letters rather than numbers. What was the resistor value in series with the collector of the transistor? The mechanical portion using dominoes seems to be complicated enough, but also reliable enough to work time and time again.

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  3. Mohannad, I love your mechanical structure and it looks better than last week for sure. I hope you will be able to implement the LEDs with relay that you were working on for demo. Better circuit drawing is needed.
    Luke, I think you still need circuit complexity. Better circuit drawing is needed.

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  4. Muhannad, the issue you were having with the voltage might be related to the combination of a transistor and an XOR. i had a similar issue where the XOR gate was drawing voltage from the transistor even when it wasn't supposed to. I fixed this by not having a transistor directly connected to the XOR and as result things worked a lot better. this could be the issue you're experiencing and you might have to rethink that connection. Other than that things look really good.

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  5. Lucas, when i first saw your schematic, i thought it was clever to use the LED in combination with the photoresistor but was disappointed to see that it gave you too many problems to continue using it. Do you think it was because the photoresistor wasn't sensitive enough or the light wasn't bright enough? Something I'm thinking you could have done was instead of shining a light onto the photoresistor, have it wired as a voltage divider, the photoresistor being grounded and then cover it somehow. That could be an option if you wanted to continue using it, this would also add complexity. Nice Job

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  6. For your Group transition, did you guys try a smaller piece of sting to help control the fall of the cup and the ball a bit more? Also it might help to slow the ball down a bit more before it leaves the ramp, it seems like the cups already on the edge so a slower moving ball might help give it less movement away from the table.

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  7. Muhannad your mechanical part is the best mechanical part I have seen in this whole RG week. I like that you were able to create a complicated circuit and mechanical piece and be able to finish everything on time.

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  8. Muhannad, your mechanical part is really interesting, but it looks like there is an issue with the way the weight is distributed for the filling bottle or with the way the tube is. You might need some adjustments to balance out the structure differently. Overall, though, it is very interesting.

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  9. Lucas, I like your setup. As I see you are having problem to hit the force sensing resistor. I think you can make your mechanical part longer, and make use more cardboard to make a path for the cup to go straight to the force sensing resistor in order to switch the next circuit.

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  10. Lucas, your mechanical portions seems to run surprisingly smoothly and is interesting to watch. Like mine, it looks like it could be a little longer; you could maybe incorporate a timer before the motor. Also, nice work on combining the 2 circuits.

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  11. You and a lot of other groups seem to use very similar circuit design layouts, but very creative mechanical devices, I can't wait to see your RG circuit.

    ReplyDelete