Original Proposal Timeline and Deliverables
In my final project proposal update, I mentioned that I was to produce a set of orchid planters with a Voronoi pattern on their walls. The set will consist of three planters of adequate size for the orchids I will put in them, with each planter having a unique appearance. I also mentioned that I am to design and implement an RFID tag tracking system with a reading device to keep track of watering events. My timeline has been going as planned and I have worked on the items I mentioned in my original post:
- November 13: Initial procurement of components and supplies. This went according to plan and I got most of my supplies.
- November 16-17: Initial prototyping of Voronoi surface morphs. I got two patterns that I am going to be working with. I forgot to take screenshots from rhino so I’m including images of my prototypes in Cura. I also made some small scale test prints.
- November 18-22: Begin setup, testing of RFID hardware. I have been working with my RFID reader setup and it’s going well. I have found that I can store a little bit of data in the tags (~1KB), so I decided to use the storage to give each pot a name.
- November 23-24: Full scale orchid pots. I think I will start making full scale pots on Saturday, November 23. Due to the intricacies of the pattern, I set the print speed kind of slow, so the prints take a long time to finish. I hope that I will be finished printing by Tuesday, November 26. I still have to work a few kinks out of my models, but that shouldn’t take too much of my time (notice the missing bottom on one of the prototypes).
- November 25 on: Putting it all together. I am going to be away for Thanksgiving but I will do my best to stay on schedule. I will most likely start integrating the tag tracking system with the pots by November 30 when I get back.
Project Progress Update
I have had a few very productive days. I have developed two prototypes of Voronoi surface patterns, and I have been printing a few models using them. These models are not full scale yet, but the process seems promising. With regards to TPU filament, my test results are mixed but mostly positive. It is definitely a new learning curve to print with a new material, but in general just the temperature and some other settings need to change. The major difference to PLA is that TPU needs a lot more finishing by hand, at least in my experience. TPU printing leaves behind a lot more stringing and blobs, but those are easily removed. The problem is exacerbated by the Voronoi pattern as the extruder needs to retract and move over empty space, leaving room for stringing and other defects. Not too bad overall, just more post processing.
That said, I have also been making good progress on my micro controller setup for the RFID tag tracking system. I received all the supplies I ordered, but unfortunately the data logger module I bought (for storage and real time clock) turned out to be a dud, so I won’t be using my old Arduino. Fortunately I had some Raspberry pi 3 b micro controllers that are compatible with the RC522 RFID reader/writer module that I ordered. I also found an OLED display I used in previous projects among my things, and I will be integrating it into the system. The way it’s going to work is, I will put a tag on each test planter, then when I water the corresponding plant, I will make a record of that by moving the RFID reader near the tag/pot. Then the micro controller will log the event with a time stamp and the ID number of the tag. After a day of watering I will then dump the data to my laptop, or better yet, since the raspberry pi has on-board wifi, I can simply ssh into the system to recover the data files and move them to my laptop.
