Introduction
Hi guys! This is my second design challenge and I am incredibly happy to be chosen as one of the challengers. The idea for this project comes from two separate ideas that merged into one. First of all let's explain the name BEEP. The name BEEP stands for Bluetooth Empowered Education Pi. As the name itself suggest the heart of this project will be a Raspberry Pi 3. First of all the thing that fueled the idea behind this project, I was one night sitting on the bus returning home from university listening to music and thinking about the things I could do for this competition. In my head were all kind of bluetooth speakers, car entertainment system or getting an old boom box back to life. But then I got an interesting idea based on something that I would have just love to have as a kid. From when I remember I was taking stuff apart trying to make them better, I wanted to see how everything works, wanted to see if I can make it stronger, faster and so on. Of course I wasn't allowed to use any power tools at that time so my modifications to RC cars for example were usually taking them apart and packing as many batteries as I can inside to try to make them faster. So my idea with this project is to make a modular robotics electronics kit to make it easy to hack stuff and along the way learn how stuff works. I'll get into more detail about this part later in this blog, now for the second part. The second part of the idea came while I was looking through random projects online, I saw someone making a Nintendo Switch looking like enclosure for a Raspberry Pi, and when I looked I saw he made it open source and that I have 90% of the parts needed for that. So in the end the whole project idea grew into a two Raspberry system where there is handheld console style controller with a 7 inch touchscreen for controlling and configuring the electronics part while being able to use it as a really powerful handheld game console. To switch between electronics mode and the RetroPi mode I will be using this small board:
The picture above shows a small micro SD card switcher which will enable to user to easily switch between two systems when the Raspberry is turned off, to make it a bit more robust I'll make it so the switch is inactive if the Raspberry is turned on. I used the RetroPi a couple of times and I really really like it, so I thought why not integrate it. Here is the diagram of the project:
As it can be seen on the diagram the Raspberries will be connected via Bluetooth, one being used as a smart controller while the other will be used as the brain of the robotic modular system. The second Raspberry will be able to be connected to all kinds of different stuff from various DC motors, servos to LEDs, sensors and Arduinos. The way I want to make the electronics part of this is for it to be completely modular and plug n play as much as possible. I will now go into some detail about the electronics part of the project:
Structure
As mentioned before the brain of this will be a Raspberry, it will be a part of what I call the main module. Things that the main module will have besides the Raspberry are a lot of ports for connecting other modules as well as an on-board battery. To make it as user friendly as possible the idea is to have a single non removable battery to keep everything running while the user changes the battery pack. Now for the ports I went with a pretty interesting decision. There were of course the standard pins that can be found on most sensors and electronics but I just feel they can get damaged easily, so my idea is using audio 3.5mm connectors. Now, there are a few reasons behind this, first of all they are much sturdier than the standard pins, and multiple wires that can be connected to a single connector. The most beautiful part about this kind of design challenge is that I still don't know how the main module will look like. My plan is to go and slowly develop the smaller modules and then design the main module to fit in with the other modules. I will separate the modules into few categories so the main module can have dedicated areas for plugging in specific modules, some of the ideas for the categories would be head modules, propulsion modules, servo modules and so on. One thing that I want to do with this project is that i want to encourage upcycling. Whenever a toy broke I would take it apart and save all of the little pieces that I thought would be useful, but it's not limited to just toys, anything can be reused in a creative way, here is an example of how I got an idea for one of my modules. The first module that I wanted start making was the ultrasonic module using the HC-SR04 module and an Arduino Nano. The general idea was to design a small boxy shape with 3.5 mm connector with holes for the sensors to be able to work, which I would then go and 3D print. But then one day I was changing a LED light bulb that went out in my house and as I held it in my hand I just go the idea, so as soon as I put in the new light bulb I went into my room drilled two holes and got this:
And then from there it got to coloring to adding to adding plug n play LED antennas and a servo and so on and so on. The goal is making powerful sensor modules which can be used in multiple different ways easily, for example being able to use the ultrasonic sensor as a sensor itself returning the distance from the object, mapping the path in front or just as a simple switch which activates at a configured distance, and in the end when the user gets comfortable with the sensor he can take it apart configure in some completely unique way or anything else. Now this is anything but the end. There is one more important thing and that's a section I'll cal pre-loaded programs.
Pre-loaded programs
We can look at this part literally like an interactive puzzle, since we already have two screens we can have instructions on it that would update as we plug in different modules, now it's not all just about adding as more pre-loaded programs as possible, each one should cover some interesting topic, or something from real life for example, while having two stories behind every program. One would be how can where that concept can be or is already used in real life, while the other one would be an imaginative story aimed towards kids to get them interested in that topic, for example let's say a pre-loaded project which would be a car with an ultrasonic module at the front which would than be played as game to get as closest as possible to a wall for example without touching it in a given time, the real life story behind that would be car parking sensors, while the kid story would be for example helping a crew land a space ship on a different planet. The number of different possible projects here is infinite. One important pre-loaded program would be the one that inspired this whole project and that would be the ability to configure how to control certain pins using the controller, so you could for example take an off the shelf RC car put the main module in it and control it that way, or adding on all of that another sensor to make it into a smart rover and so on.
Goal and plans
The goal is making something that would show people what can easily be done, let their creativity a bit free and just experiment with it, or use it as a hand-held console, while also showing how everyday house hold items can be used in a million different ways whether if it's using a light bulb as a head module or using water bottles for buoyancy when making a small boat. This is my second design challenge the first being the Pi Chef Design Challenge. For that challenge I had anything but a developed idea and was not chosen as a challenger but I just wanted to try out something new and really liked it. I now have some sense of how this challenge functions as well as how much time I need for certain parts of the builds, while the idea is of course not completely thought through, which makes this challenge a whole lot more fun! I wish the best of luck to all of the other people participating in this challenge, thank you for reading the whole blog, hope you like it!
Milos
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