What you will find on this page:
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What will it do?
Who's done what beforehand?
What will you design?
What materials and components will be used? Where will they come from? How much will they cost? What parts and systems will be made? What processes will be used? What questions need to be answered?
How will it be evaluated?
Planning
As I've decided what my final project would be at the beginning of the FabAcademy 2019 cycle, you can find an answer to most of those questions on the next pages: Principles and practices, the final development page (all details) and the final project page (final page)
What will it do?
A giant breadboard, including components that can be used to teach children about micro-controllers. The teacher gets a giant breadboard that can be used as a board, but also the children get a bigger than usual breadboard.
The second part of the assignment is to make giant components, that work. For now we keep it down to 3 components: a LED, resistor and push button.
The last part of the assignment is to make a new pcb circuit for the children to learn how to program - on the breadboard and how to solder SMD. The LED up Kidz is a workshop that we give to children aged 8 tot 14 to learn about SMD soldering, electronics production and programming.
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Who's done what beforehand?
For this I'll refer to the the final development page (all details)page as it has been completely written out there. Long story short: we took a look at giant breadboards from Hackaday, OSH and Sparkfun.
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What will you design?
See question nr 2: What will it do.
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What materials and components will be used?
As there are 2 parts in this final project I'll split it up in 2 parts: the giant breadboard and the electronic circuit
The giant breadboard
- conductive wire from Bekaert
- conductive textile from Bekaert
- filt from the do-it-yourself stor
- magnets from Bearconductive
- components for the breadboard from RS
- wood from opitec
- plastic from the school aisle from the grocerystore
- metal wire from 123D.nl
The electronic circuit
- epoxy pcb
- components from RS
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Where will they come from?
The place where the components will come from range from online stores to actual stores. For the electronics we prefer RS or farnell, depending on the component and who delivers faster. For the materials it depends on what we find cheaper online or in the store close to us. For example, filt can be found easely at Schleiper, a store specialized in drawing and art materials.
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How much will they cost?
The materials that we have in mind should not go over 10euros/piece. The most expensive part of the breadboard is the conductive textile and the filt. Luckily for us, we are able to test with samples that we got from Bekaert.
As I can't tell you the full price until the project is completely finished, I have a google sheet where I keep all of the estimated costs. Please keep in mind that this is the cost for the full packet, only including materials and no work hours.
The link to the google sheet can be found here. Please keep in mind that this is an estimation.
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What parts and systems will be made?
The breadboard and the electronic circuit will be completely made my me during the course of the academy. For the breadboard I'm falling back on the more machining tools like the 3D printer, cnc milling machine, vinyl and laser cutting. Where for the electronic circuit I'm using all the newly learned knowledge from the electronics chapters.
For the breadboard the filt and wood will be cut with the lasercutter. The see-through overlay will be cutted with the vinylcutter as we're not sure about the material. The connections will have a nicer aesthetic due to the 3D printed shells that we're putting on it.
For the electronics we're keeping in mind that we want to use it as pcb for the kids when they first encounter pbc's and smd soldering. Therfore we will stay with a bigger package than the 1206 standard package and have more than enough space for the kids to solder everything. Inspired by the Fri3D Camp and the MakerFaire in Ghent we will also have the pcb in a nice, non-typical shape resembling an animal. The two LED's connected to the push button are perfect for the eyes, while the tiltswitch can easely be changed by another sensor and can serve to light up another LED
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What processes will be used?
As mentioned before, for the breardboard, most of the machines that are available in a FabLab, for the electronics most of the electronics chapters.
For each component that I'm making:
- Giant components
- 3D printer
- soldering
- Finishing touches by hand (sanding down, spray painting)
- Breadboard for children
- Lasercutting
- Vinylcutting
- metalwork
- Breadboard for teachers
- sewing machine (manual and embroiling)
- lasercutting
- Electronics
- electronics design
- electronics production (etching and milling)
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What questions need to be answered?
As usual there will be lot's of questions that need to be answered, but if you look at this list here, you already have the main outlines for the biggest questions. On the final project development page you can find the questions that I've had on the go while prototyping everything.
- How are we going to connect the breadbord to the teachers bord?
- How are we going to transport it?
- How many pieces will we make?
- Under what licence will it fall?
- What materials will we use?
- What's the cost of everything in the end (BOM but also all the prototypes)
- Is it kids proof?
- Is it easy to make? / How much time does it take to produce it?
- How will I document everything?
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How will it be evaluated?
The evaluation is something more ... personal in this case. At the time of writing we already tested our first prototypes on the children during the easterholidays and during the exercises we could see a notable difference in understanding of the breadboard. A lot of questions and confusions that happend before didn't happen this time. Of course, we didn't just test on one group and were lucky to have stronger kids. We also tested it in a BSO-class (BSO is the special needs branch from the Belgian school system).
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Planning
The assignment will be prototyped during the FabAcademy 2019. This course runs from the middle of January until the beginning of June. In the first week of the Academy I gave up this planning.
- 16th of January 2019: Start Academy
- 13 February: electronics production: Hello World
- 27 February: electronics design: LED up KidZ
- 13 march: embedded programming
- 3 April: input devices: LED up Kidz
- 10 April: output devices: LED up KidZ
- 17 April: interface and app programming
- 24 April: networking and communications
- 1 May: mechanical design: Chocolate 3D printer
- 8 May: machine design: Chocolate 3D printer
- 22 may: application and implication
- deadline prototype: 12th of june 2019
- deadline: 19th of june 2019. Includes everything
But as we moved on into the Academy some things changed.
- 16th of January 2019: Start Academy
- 13 February: electronics production: Hello World
- 27 February: electronics design: LED up KidZ
- 13 march: embedded programming
- 3 April: input devices: final project input
- 10 April: output devices: final project output / first testing with children
- 17 April: interface and app programming
- 24 April: networking and communications: making the fox blink
- 1 May: mechanical design: Chocolate 3D printer
- 8 May: machine design: Chocolate 3D printer
- 22 may: application and implication
- deadline prototype: 12th of June 2019
- deadline: 19th of June 2019. Includes everything