Week 4 Update

During this week, two songs was hardcoded through Arduino: Mary Had A Little Lamb and a song completely created by our musician. This task was supposed to be the testing phase, but since our musician is also the group's coder (strong in both areas), the testing phase which was planned to be a span of three weeks was cut down to one. Because of how fast this task was completed, it cannot be considered the testing phase anymore. That was when we decided to change our route from having a testing phase to making our project aesthetically pleasing. The quickness of this completion also made the group think about more ideas, such as adding a button for different songs being played and putting lights around the xylophone. In the previous week, the challenge was how to successfully connect two motors together. When the small motors were delivered, it just so happened that hot gluing them together was not needed because rubber bands were enough to tightly hold them in place. However, this does not mean we will not glue them together during the final phase of the project. As a backup, a 3D CAD model was drawn through SolidWorks if the group wanted to go through he 3D approach (see Figure 1). Along with that, effort was made to 3D model the body of the cat, so that it can be 3D printed for aesthetics. However, that idea was soon discarded because of none of the group members had enough experience with SolidWorks to make the body actually visually appealing (see Figure 2). We looked through Amazon and found a realistic cat hand puppet (see Figure 3). This would be perfect because we put all the intricate parts (breadboard, wires, etc.) in the cat puppet, normally where a hand would go. The link to buy it can be found below.

Click here to buy the cat puppet

Figure 1:

Figure 2:

Figure 3:

Week 3 Update

The group was faced with a rather challenging issue: how to connect the two servos together. The purpose of those two motors is to allow up-down and left-right movement (see Figure 1). One of the motors (pointing upwards) rests on the holder of the stand, which will provide the left-right movement. The other motor is placed on top of it, but is laying on its side with the motor pointing to the side. This will provide the up-down movement. Having the motors tightly connected is crucial because it contributes to how accurate the keys are being played. A wooden connector was made (see Figure 2), but it was too bulky and restricted motion. We decided to buy smaller motors (link below), so that we can hot glue them. The motors we have now are rented from the school, so we cannot do anything permanent to them. Once the motors were delivered, the group tried to two motors with rubber bands first. The rubber bands work so well that the idea of gluing them together was ditched. Now, with the smaller motors, the coding to hit each key was started, and was finished by the end of the week. A sample code will be found below. Simultaneously, rough sketches were made of the overall appearance of the project and it's pseudocode. Both of them will also be provided below.
                 
Click here to buy motors                  
Click here to preview sample code
Click here for rough sketches and pseudocode


Figure 1:

Figure 2: 

Week 2 Update

Two members (Gloria and Tanbir) of the group started to initiate the designing process of the arm. At the same time, the other two (Scott and Robert) began their code to program our two servo motors. Firstly, we create a stand to hold both motors and to act as a skeleton prototype to hold the cat upright (see Figure 1). Instructions on how to create the stand can be found in the blog's Tutorial section. We encountered our very first challenge of the project: how to connect the two motors that will help maneuver the xylophone mallet. For now, we are holding the two motors together with tape - a lot of tape. Furthermore, we found an ideal a 3D model of an ideal body we could use (see Figure 2).

Click here to buy preferred xylophone
Click here for 3D model cat

Figure 1: Xylophone Stand

Figure 2: 3D Model Cat

 The following is a short video of testing our motors and its code:

Link To Project's Proposal

Click here

GANTT Chart

Week 1 Update

We focused primarily on two things in order to create a strong foundation for the project: brainstorming and the proposal. Our theme of the project we all agreed to do is music. We began to form a couple of ideas on what our animatronic device should take shape of. Our thoughts went from creating a moving military drummer, at first, to a moving cat drummer because we felt the need to make our device more creative and appealing to youngsters. That was when we decided on the intent of this device to be solely for an entertainment use for little children. We were also inspired by a viral video of a cat found online. However, we then wanted to change the instrument used to a xylophone, so that the cat device could actually create a song and not a beat. We didn't want to betray the idea of having the cat moving its arms to drum (see Figure 1), and we were limited in creating a melodious song if we used the drum in comparison to the xylophone. This process of actually having the cat to playing a beautifully sounding song will be our testing process. So then, we discussed how we can make this cat-xylophone device have life like attributes for it to be an animatronic device. We concluded on three different coordinated movements: have the eyes blink, the ears move, and the arms move to play a song. Right after that, Robert asked our artist, "What should we name our cat, Gloria?" A light bulb went on in my head. One of the things I kept on the back on my head is what we should name our animatronic. It had to be good and catchy, I thought. We all agreed on the name, Gloria The Xylophone Playing Cat. Another question was raised and that was how can we actually create this animatronic. Is the creating process reasonable for us, Drexel freshman, or was it out of our reach? After researching (link found below) and analyzing the resources we have, we knew we could get this project completed in a ten week span.


Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA_pbMR6jVs

Figure 1: Brainstorming ideas (e.g.  multiple motors for the arm)