Eat Your Heart Out, Rube!

November 28th, 2009

Once again I am guilty of not having posted more frequently. The last time I wrote it was for the start of the term. Maybe it’s fitting that I not write again until the end of the term? At any rate, this term is basically over for me. We presented our final project on Wednesday, and all I really have to do is show up and watch the rest of the presentations. So by this Wednesday I will be officially done. Yeah!

For my ECE 101 class, half of our grade was to make a Rube Goldberg machine (think Mousetrap the game), but we had to use at least three electrical components. Sadly, my group was a waste, and I ended up doing most of the work. At any rate, the gist of it is as follows: There is an electromagnet holding up a ball bearing at the top of the ramp. When the door opens, the circuit is broken and the electromagnet fails releasing the ball bearing. The ball rolls down the ramp and at the bottom completes the circuit to a DC motor. The motor lowers a cup on to a photoresistor on the ground. When the photoresistor is covered, it turns on the LED on the table. Voila! Door opens, light goes on.

Ours may not have been as flashy as some of the other groups, but it had more electrical know-how than what was taught in class. Plus if my group had actually contributed any ideas who knows what we could have done. As it stands, I’m pretty happy with the end result.

I’ve uploaded the video to YouTube, so it should be viewable below.

Posted in education, ee, geek, jPhone, video, youtube | 3 Comments »

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 19:59 and is filed under education, ee, geek, jPhone, video, youtube. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “Eat Your Heart Out, Rube!”

  1. Susannananna Says:
    December 2nd, 2009 at 07:49

    Is the cell phone just reflecting a light? Or…??? I don’t really get what’s happening on the floor there.
    (if it’s too complicated to explain on here, I’ll learn to live without these details) ;)

  2. Susannananna Says:
    December 2nd, 2009 at 07:50

    oh… ps… I sent the Youtube link to Joe and told him you’re one step closer to taking his job.

  3. Donald Says:
    December 2nd, 2009 at 09:57

    Heh, we cheated a little with the cell phone. When I built it, I didn’t take into account the relative darkness of the floor, so when we placed it there on project day, it was too dark and the light was always on, even after adjusting the potentiometer (little dial that changes how sensitive it is). I could have easily switched out the pot with one that was more forgiving, but I didn’t have one with me. So we put a cell phone near it with its flash on in order to pretend to have more light.

    Otherwise the thing on the floor is basically just a night light. When it gets dark enough, the LED goes on, but when light enough it goes off. And Joe’s job is only in danger if I can work from PDX…