Inspiration
The Monopoly Junior ATM was inspired from the early stages of our lives when we were unable to count money. It was a hustle having to constantly persuade an older family member to sit with us for the next four hours of our Monopoly game. As we grew older and gained more interest in the technology world, we realized that a simple robot could easily take over this tedious role. With this in mind, we made our ATM easily operable by any age group to spread the love of Monopoly to the younger generation without a bored adult tagging along.
What it does
As the title suggests, the Monopoly Junior ATM dispenses Monopoly Junior money.
How we built it
We first planned out the roles each member would take on. Each member then fulfilled their part of the project and we would share our progress through meetings. Once we put it all together, we made our finishing touches and Viola! A lovely ATM in front of our eyes.
- Ellie : For the design portion of our project, there was lots of time spent brainstorming and drawing out the design of the ATM. This included conferring with teammates to make sure that the designs were actually possible to build and work, as well as creating 3D models of it using OnShape.
- Claire : For the construction of the ATM, I primarily followed Ellie’s design and took inspiration from online when faced with challenges. First, the outer shell of the ATM was made, followed by the conveyor belt. After that, the money dispenser was created and attached. The materials used include cardboard, paper, rolls, and bamboo sticks.
- Kaniesa : For the circuitry and coding, it was important to confirm what materials the ATM would need based on our design of how it would work (e.g conveyor belt=need motors). From there, supplies were gathered and I started designing the circuit on Tinkercad. Once that was done, the Arduino was coded and the circuit was made using Arduino, DC Motors, Breadboard, lots of wires, and a big red button.
Challenges we ran into
A big challenge we faced was with getting our motors to work. At first, we used Servo motors until we realised we needed a stronger motor that could rotate 360 degrees. That meant that we had to use DC stepper motors, something we’ve never used before. It was an adventure learning how they work, as well as getting the speed and direction to our liking. Outside of that, like all build projects, there was a bit of a challenge to make it work even smoother and as efficiently as possible for our users.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
With this being our first time participating in the Highlander Engineering Challenge, we’re so proud of being able to submit something for it. It was also a nice change of pace being able to work on a hardware focused project after only previously doing software focused projects. Another accomplishment that we’re proud of is the fact that our project actually works.
What we learned
Through constructing this ATM, our team developed a greater understanding on how Ardunios work. We also became familiar with new hardware technologies including the DC stepper motors.
What's next for Monopoly Junior ATM
While our current ATM only deposits Monopoly Junior money, a possible update we would consider is doing a regular Monopoly ATM, that would deposit a large variety of bills!
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