Snazzy SolidWorks Models in the Making!

Marc Risked His Life on Black Friday to Find us the Perfect Brush

Thanks, Marc! We're glad you made it back alive (see end for more of Marc's breathtaking adventure).

 Beautiful!

 Look at those luscious bristles!

Marc was caught amidst a wave of savage shoppers in the hardware store commonly referred to as Lowes, on Black Friday evening.  As our protagonist neared complete exhaustion, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the most spectacular sweeping machine he had ever seen.  Oh what a glorious day for all of mankind.

The Quest for the Infrared Receiver

Today, Connor and Kate had a little fun with a DVD player, screw drivers, and a soldering iron. Our happy little Broomba chassis kept us company while we did it.

DVD player and happy Broomba chassis

The first thing to do was take off the black covering. That was simple, we just had to remove a few screws.

Picture 1: Connor the hand model unscrewing the DVD case

Here's what we found underneath the outer covering of a DVD player:

Picture 2: inside of a DVD player

And here's a closeup of where the disk would go:

Picture 3: where the DVD goes

The white plastic that you can see in picture 3 was intertwined with the black plastic and it was hard to shimmy out of there gently. Since we weren't putting the DVD player back together, we just broke it all apart. After unscrewing multiple screws, we were able to find a few motors and some gears. 

Below a small yellow board is shown. You can see in Picture 2 where this was located in the DVD player. Everything was very heavily soldered onto this board so we weren't able to salvage anything from it, but it was pretty fun Googling the serial numbers of the parts to find out what served what purpose on this board. 

Picture 4

We found the IR receiver that we need! It was right next to the LED display.

Figure 5: The IR receiver! 

Picture 6: The IR receiver in all of its glory

 And for an added bonus, we managed to find and salvage a potentiometer!

Picture 7: Potentiometer!

It's Aliiive!

Wild Motor Shield Spotted!

While on his daily walk home from work,

Connor encountered an Adafruit Motor Shield v2.3.

Luckily the motor shield was obtained and can be used for the project.

The Broomba is Born!

The Broomba is Born!

Today we met up to discuss the mechanical aspect of our sweet sweeper robot, which we have named the Broomba. Our initial idea was to have a remote-controlled robot with the broom on the front to push around dirt. The broom in the front would also maybe move back and forth, controlled by a motor. Today we refined our idea to make a more efficient robot. 

The Initial Idea

We decided to change the broom from a push broom to a circular spinning brush. The brush would be connected to a motor which would make it rotate, which would collect the dust and push it into a dust pan that was located between the brush and the chassis. 

A few notes on the design

The brush is going to be attached to the chassis of our robot with 3-D printed and laser-cut pieces. The chassis has different holes in different sections of it, so a custom-printed part will be needed in order to securely attach it. 

We also toyed with the idea of different attachments for our Broomba, like a scrubber that shoots water, or a Swiffer attachment. Possible Swiffer funding??? ;)

Disclaimer: We are not electrical engineers.

Connor Gathers Assorted Goodies

Connor is not an Electrical Engineer,

but he decided to take some time this weekend to rip apart some devices, and salvage some components that may be useful.

Seen above are some tools used to get the job done, some cool motors, buttons, switches, and wheels, an IR remote control, a power cable, and a battery holder.  We will probably use some of this stuff.