Jimmy|rigs: November 2013

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to post an update on what I've been doing as an intern with the i3 program. As of now my friends and I have been an intern with the i3 program for three months. In addition to Alex Lin, I recruited another friend, Phillip Reeder, who is an avid coder. Our task is to construct devices that the program can take to schools and use them to encourage students to become more involved in computer sciences. Our first project was to finish the construction of a home-made synthesizer. The base was already there, so all we had to do was re-wire the electronics. Below are a few photos of it.

After we finished that, we were given the project that will most likely take the rest of the school year to complete: the construction of a miniature "smart house". What is a smart house? Smart houses actually exist today, in various forms. What generally defines a smart house is a central computer that can control various aspects of the house, from air conditioning to locking/unlocking doors to playing music. We took this a step further, and planned to create an app that we can control the miniature house through. In addition, we planned to add a few more automated features, all controllable from the app:

-Controllable, RBG lighting

-Automated opening/closing interior doors

-Exterior motion-sensitive security lighting

-Locking/closing door

-Controllable water feature (fountain)

-Retracting staircase

-Garage door

-Voice recognition system

-Descending blinds

Initially, the plan was to prototype this all on an old dollhouse that the program had from previous years, before buying a much larger and nicer one or the final project. Below are a few pictures of the house.

The first thing we did was to insert a second ceiling above the first floor, providing us with a way to hide the electronics we were putting in. Next came the relatively easy task of adding the lighting, which we did using one-color, small LEDs. For the final project we will have RGB bright LEDs. My friend Phillip worked on coding the app while I worked on implementing our ideas in the proof-of-concept model. Below are some pictures of the LEDs installed.

Next we began prototyping the blind system. In the final project, we plan on using garage door style blind systems to lower and raise the blinds, which will slide into the gap between the two ceilings. This was the prototype, so instead we just used some card stock and folded it so it folded up into itself upon being raised by fishing line connected to a servo, which is shown below.

Next, we worked on the retracting staircase. Again, due to our limited resources and rudimentary platform, we weren't able to integrate this idea as smoothly as it will be in the final project. The staircase essentially splits in two pieces, one raising to cover the opening to the second floor, with the second rotating beneath the floor of the first floor, a panel sliding over it to conceal it. Our prototype is shown below.

The prototype was approved and we moved on to finding a suitable model house to work with. We quickly realized that none of the houses offered online suited our needs. They didn't have enough room to include all of our mechanisms and there wasn't any way we could conceal it all. So we decided to design our own! I love designing, so I took the lead on this, and did a quick mock-up of the house we intend to build, shown below.

We will be making this out of wood and acrylic, which we will laser cut using Georgia Tech's facilities. The laser cutting device will give us a precision we have meet worked with before. I will be making the templates on SketchUp.