Sonny the Robot

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hi5LW0xaXzj2vZRLQxholdKpdMRqGYIAqlVi731M8EE/edit?usp=sharing

Inspiration

There are over 38 million houseplant owners in the U.S. alone. Often, an apartment, or even a home, may be facing the wrong direction or have the wrong terrain to get optimal sunlight for a houseplant. The little sunlight that does enter the home moves as the Sun goes from East to West in the sky. A lonely houseplant may find that it only gets light for an hour or two, then starves in sadness, so close to solar nourishment.

But Lily, our houseplant, will not have this problem. She has a friend in Sonny, a robot terrified of the dark. Sonny moves his friend Lily to the light and helps feed her.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/716535/us-houseplants-participation/

What it does

Our robot is intended to seek light. It has a light sensor that can detect whether there is a strong light in the room, and if so, it will move towards it, unless after sunset.

How we built it

We used a Sparkfun Redbot for movement. We used a sparkboard for control and a motor driver. A light sensor and a distance sensor were used to help it navigate. A dragonboard is connected to allow it to communicate with the internet so it can know the sun has set, and to upload information on how much light it has received for the day.

https://github.com/ismailHa/DartHack

Challenges we ran into

The Sparkfun Redbot's sparkboard motor control short circuited, and the frontline tracers were faulty, and the bumpers were non-functional. The board had to be replaced mid-hack with another sparkboard we brought with us and improvisation was necessary to make it function. Soldering equipment was not hot enough to solder. The first qualcomm kit we received from MLH was missing a sensor mezzanine.