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Build Inside The Box - Member Projects!

 

Members Winners Announced! - Meet the Winners

Check out these projects - our element14 member final submissions to Build Inside the Box.

 

Congratulations to each of these members for creating unique projects that fit the constraints of using all the parts in The Box.

 

 

E14 Presents - Ball on a Beam - Build Inside the Box 2021 
Build Inside The Box - Sump Pump Alarm
Build Inside The Box - Advanced Bike Computer
Build Inside the Box - Doremino #1 | Concept
What's in the box! Don't look in the box!

 

The element14 presents contestants James, Katie and Clem are the judges who will be deciding which of the above projects wins the member contest for Build Inside the Box.

 

Member winners will be announce the week of June 7, 2021.

 

James, Katie and Clem will be revealing their builds on our 500th episode of element14 presents airing Friday, 28-May.  Each of them is competing on behalf of a STEM educator in their part of the world - and those educators have a chance at winning some awesome prize packages the help them continue teaching Science, Technology, Engineering and Math to the next generation of engineers.  Register for the June 22 live Twitch stream by clicking the banner below to see who won.

 

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All element14 members will have a chance to vote on the element14 presents winner.  Voting opens 28-May and closes 11-June.  Watch this space for details.

  • I will second (James O'Gorman) comment "... I super-loved this style of competition."  I hope element14 does it again.  Definitely put it in the Rolodex of Ideas.

    I'm always drawn to how people solve a problem or challenge.  I'm really looking forward to seeing how , and use the parts.

  • Wow - This was a pretty tough contest. I feel like I could have used another week or two on the code. Reading through the other blogs, it seems that others had the same. Just a couple were able to demonstrate a complete, working project all in one. I loved doing this, and in the end, it did seem like a really time-constrained thing like on Chopped. Super huge congrats to everyone who competed and it was awesome fun!

     

    My 'ball on a beam' is a project that I actually started about 10 years ago with LEGO and a Sharp IR distance sensor. I've always wanted to make a better one. Somehow the photo-transistor convinced me to use a stepper motor to control the beam since I could home it. This meant a more complicated set of code for the homing routine, plus using a stepper controller (more complex) and a stepper library which as I found out uses blocking code. To be clear, a stepper is the WRONG motor for my application. This should use a servo; or at least some sort of smart stepper (closed-loop). My build ended up focusing heavily on the accompanying mechanical build to hold it all together which was most of the last week (staying up until 1 am) while transferring from a breadboard to proto-board for the electronics.

     

    I was quite pleased with how I ended up using the op-amp. I had no idea at first, but ended up cleanly using all four channels. One channel cleaned up the photo-interrupter, and the other three used a microphone input and created a cleanly pulse-stretched digital input. The plan here was to be able to clap my hands to change 'mode' on the ball-on-a-beam. One mode was to read out the current temperature by positioning the ball. Another mode I was considering was 'manual' mode where the trimpot can correspond to the angle of the beam. The third mode would disable the stepper.

     

    The last night of the contest, I ended up staying up until like 1 or 2 am, before literally falling asleep waiting for my video to upload while sitting at the computer (which is why the final post was at like 3:30 am).

     

    No excuses - I could probably have put more time in from the start. Clearly, others were able to do a spectacular job in the same time frame, so kudos to them. And I super-loved this style of competition. As always, it is awesome to see the variety of uses that everyone does. Sump pump controller, sewing machine controller - all sorts of crazy and unique ideas.

     

    Thanks to the E14 team and all the supporting sponsors! Hope to see these again in the future!

  • I look forward to seeing what people do with these components.

     

    DAB