Category: Mechanical Engineering

Undergrad Graduation 2021 Edition

Officially, I graduated in December 2020 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Cum Laude from San Diego State University 🎓 However, SDSU doesn’t do Fall commencements. And we had a pandemic which cancelled a lot things, so all normal in-person graduation commencements were put on hold anyway. Fortunately, SDSU decided to host a… Continue reading Undergrad Graduation 2021 Edition

Finite State Machine for the Marker Band Sorter

The title pretty much describes this post haha. Special shout out to my loving boyfriend, Tony Nguyen, for helping me with this Arduino code! It still needs some refinement though, but this is what I’ll be testing with me team this week. Previously… So previously, I was trying to use 2 Arduino Unos. One to… Continue reading Finite State Machine for the Marker Band Sorter

Marker Bands Keep Getting Clumped Together

Or they get stuck in the Triangle Feeder (see pics below). It’s mostly 3D-printed (the dog bones were from the failed vibrating feeder – ABS plastic, iirc) with the grey triangle being resin printed. Those black brushy things are false eyelashes lol (thanks Theresa!). This whole thing is held together by superglue. If we can… Continue reading Marker Bands Keep Getting Clumped Together

C++ Lesson Learned – Scope

What great timing! I wanted to learn more about OOP (object oriented programming) concepts, and my senior design project just did that! TL;DR = Tried to access the color signature variable (m_signature) so I could interface the Pixy2 camera with the Arduino. Manage to figure it out by understanding local and global scope, pointers, and… Continue reading C++ Lesson Learned – Scope

Pixy2 Camera *CAN* Detect Marker Bands Consistently

Last Friday, Theresa and I tested all kinds of setups to get the Pixy2 Camera to detect the marker bands consistently. And I am happy to announce: WE HAVE DONE IT! Here’s a video of it working: And here’s some pictures of the setup (with the lights on): As you can tell, I have a… Continue reading Pixy2 Camera *CAN* Detect Marker Bands Consistently

Pixy2 Camera Cannot Detect Marker Bands Consistently

Things changed up with my senior design project, and we are no longer using the $50,000 camera. With that said, we are now using a Pixy2 camera and we are sorting the marker bands by color. Up to now, I have managed to get the Pixy2 camera working to detect colors on objects. For example,… Continue reading Pixy2 Camera Cannot Detect Marker Bands Consistently

Feeling proud

I usually don’t double post in a day, but I have to say: I’m feeling pretty proud of myself! 😤 At this point in time, I got all the individual electronic components of my senior design projects work. These include: NEMA 17 Stepper Motor Servo Motor Vibrating Motor Pixy2 Camera My next steps are all… Continue reading Feeling proud

Using an A4988 stepper motor driver (Part 2)

In my previous post, I talked about setting up the A4988 stepper motor driver’s current/voltage limit. Today, I finally got the stepper motor moving! There’s just one thing that’s bugging me: the motor is a little loud 😅 So in the video below, I attached a delrin disk to the stepper motor. FYI, this delrin… Continue reading Using an A4988 stepper motor driver (Part 2)