Cue: The Lost Spring Break Update
Introduction:
Many people around the world have their own reason to bike. Whether it be for some simple exercise or having fun and enjoying the ride along the streets or a bike trail (it could be both too). Whatever that reason may be, we would like to bring a sense of security to these people when biking and to do we are creating a product which allows other vehicles on the streets to better understand where these people on bikes are signaling to. Utilizing our product, bikers will be able to easily signal movements and increase visibility with wireless signal lights that are able to be attached to a variety of surfaces, such as a sweater/jacket, backpack, or on the bike itself. We would like to decrease the amount of bike related injuries and death around the world.
Recap:
In order to improve our product we thought about how cars also have brake lights on the back and we decided that implementing some kind of brake lights in our product would allow people in cars to realize that the bike is slowing down and coming to a stop. Previously we finished our first prototype of our product but it looked messy and some of the LED lights wouldn't light up since the thread wasn't wrapped tightly around each LED to turn them all on at once. Currently we are sewing all over again but making our product more presentable and stable.
Current Sprint Objective:
Finish up sewing for our prototype
Creating a more durable and presentable design
Creating a CAD model and figuring out how to connect another button on to bike handle bars and connect it to the microbits
Progress Updates/ Insights:
During this week, we were irresponsible due to the fact that we didn't bring our prototype to work on during spring break but we did discuss how we were going to make our product much more stable and whether we would have the microbits in front or on the back of the felt. What we decided was that we would have a piece of cardboard on the back of the felt and maybe another piece of felt attached to it to make it look more presentable and durable since sometimes the felt would bend inwards a little when you put it on.
This is an old picture of Eddy sewing, he learned a mistake he made in which he needed to make the sewing tighter and looped more around the LED lights so he worked on resewing. He is currently done with the brake lights and one arrow. Images of what it currently looks like will be provided on the next blog post.
Blockers/ Obstacles / Unknowns:
The team didn't have any obstacles aside from not having finished the sewing yet, which we had planned on finishing before Spring Break. Aside from the sewing we did have an unknown which was, how were we going to connect the microbits to a button.
This is an image of one of the microbits we'll be using connected to a pair of batteries to power it. Soon we'll have to figure out how to organize these battery packs on the felt as well or come up with some other way to give it power and so it doesn't give a discomforting feeling when put on.
What's Next?
Once we finish the sewing process, which we plan on being done with on Monday when we come back, we will begin to test if all the LED lights light up and we will then connect the microbits and figure out where we'll be having it on the felt. Once we have that organized we will use the cardboard to make it durable and sew the straps on it as well. The next big step would be making the CAD model to hold the button and figuring out how we'll connect that button in the first place. The demo on Monday when we come back from spring break was supposed to showcase how the LED lights on the felt was working properly and responsive to the microbits.