blueBox

Project for the 2020 Invention Studio Hackathon

Inspiration

We were inspired by the current conditions of school and how we wished there were a convenient and automated way to have disposable masks at ease.

What we learned

To say we learned a lot would be an understatement. We each learned valuable things from laser printing and soldering to programming a pixy cam and buzzer to play fun ringtones. This was our first time using a TI board so there was a learning curve on the software side. We opted to use Energia due to our familiarity with the Arduino platform, but this forced us to dig into some of the c++ code behind our libraries in order to port them from Arduino to Energia.

How we did it

Using Energia, we programmed a Pixy2 Camera to detect when a mask is on camera which then emits a blue light and a happy song. When there is no mask detected, a person may wave their hand in front of an Infrared sensor which then will dispense a mask.

We CADed the box in Solidworks and laser printed it using InkSpace. The box houses the electronic components which include the TI msp board and masks are dispensed using a motorized spring.

Challenges we faced

We faced challenges with the hardware we had access to because some of our ambitious ideas were incompatible with the actual hardware we had so we had to alter our original goals. For example, we envisioned using facial recognition with our camera, but the only camera we possessed was not capable of this functionality so we had to use its features to align it with our goal.

Built With

• batchfile
• c
• c++
• drillpress
• energia
• inkscape
• lasercut
• python
• solidworks
• ti