Today we took a few more steeps in the right direction, but everything is taking a longer time than we anticipated, and we still have a lot to do. Our goals was to finish the sourdough machine by day 10, but it is starting to feel a bit unrealistic. Currently it looks like we will have the product ready by day 11, and perhaps we can use the weekend to film, and write the report, so that we will finish everything on time.
One of the goals for today was to collect the Arduino code to one file which is functional with all the components. Another goals was to test the motor set-up and start measuring the amount that get dispensed, for this we needed to build a prototype chassis.
The arduino, nodeMCU and all the components, WIP
Today Aksel has focused on wiring all components and code together, except for NodeRED just currently; that will probably be tomorrow.
The first challenge has been getting it organized in a way that allows us to easily spread it out again on the test bench. Therefore I chose to link up 4 breadboards and keep the arduino on the side. We can then just split the breadboard up if that is needed.
Thereafter I looked at every arduino code file and made each task into a function so it is all callable. Currently are we going to have the following code functions:
- Amount(“containerName”), returns and float with the distance from the container lid.
- Flour(degrees, speed), to be changed to accept mL, but might vary from flour to flour. The speed is to change the intensity of the movement.
- Water(mL), to be changed to reflect a measured flowrate.
- Mixing(degrees, speed), to be further incorporated into a mixing function taking into account the amount of sourdough.
The next steps are writing the functions controlling the various modes. So that includes baking mode travel mode and keep it kicking. Also the display code needs to be finished and incorporated in the main code.
Sebastian is currently writing the display code which will make it possible to display any string easily.
The biggest challenge however is going to be establishing a logical way of establishing serial communication between the nodeMCU and the arduino as the nodeMCU acts as the wifi hookup.
OLED
Sebastian and Emilie worked on the OLED-screen, which is a quite unreliable little thing. Even though we bought a new OLED with high resolution and color, it caused us trouble, as it turns out that the display Adafruit sells has one extra pin broken out. A pin that our cheap Chinese knock-off seemed to miss: the CS pin (Chip Select pin). We will ask if instrument group can help us to solder it so it works, but at the moment we plan on just using the OLED we used with the locker.
We figured out how to load images to it, flip between displays and change the font and position. It is important that the display provides easy interaction with the user and is in line with our vision.
Chindogu 