imitator

We are UP printing today.

Another full day in the workshop today.

Daisy and Meg constructed our poles while Anna worked out the breadboard. There should hopefully be a post about that shortly.

Poles and pulleys assembled we set them into our concrete moulds for each corner and left them overnight to harden - lets hope they turn out ok!

Just had really bad news broken to us...

Totally confused on what is happening with the connection of our motors to this breadboard layout. 

We had another shopping day today. 

We found some pulleys that are going to work perfectly inside our poles and we found our poles to match.

We went to a marine supply shop and got some cord that can hold a lot of weight to use to attach to our extruder.

We got candles for the filament and another bag of mortar for our blocks.

I was really struggling over the last few days as to how to put all four stepper motors together and was scrolling through endless tutorials online as I didn't want to approach Emily with absolutely not having a clue at all. Just found this and am hoping that we can adapt it to fit our needs and motors. As it has our arduino, four motors and an extra power supply.

Just had a chat with Emily who read through the instructable I just posted and our motors and said that we should be able to adapt it to work with our motors! 

Have not met for a few days and have decided that until Wednesday the 18th - Ross's hand-in (INDN 311) we will focus on his project.

This is a very stressful time and it has been hard balancing these two large and important projects. Will be straight back on track as soon as all of this double project madness is over.

Daisy has completed all the concrete blocks we need for our base (with a couple of extra ones just in case we damage one in the process). They are looking good - will not be the same colour however at the end of the project as they have not all had the same amount of time to dry. We realised this going into the project and are ok/happy with how it will look aesthetically.

We started out planning on making our whole structure 1m long by 30cm wide. Though after laying out 10 of the 10cm blocks side by side we (as a group) have decided this scale is not actually that nice and have decided to reduce it in size. We'll cut it down to 6x3 blocks - so about 60cm by 30cm give or take a little because we have to take into consideration the size of the gap between blocks.

Decided to give this tutorial a try and make our input element work. Turn out to be really helpful but worried that the arduino uno isn't going to have enough space to fit four LDRs and run four stepper motors.

We have finished collecting all the bits and bobs we need in the way of electronics (we hope)

Researching more into LDR's and if they are what we need since the scope of project has changed from our original idea. They seemed like the most appropriate thing for the intended sun tracking now with a more interactive tracker that actually monitors the movement of hand-held light sources in a blacked out room, the requirements might be different.