Skip to main content

RS & "Children with Cancer UK" - The Technical Bit

The UK division of RS Components has teamed up with a great charity this year and will work to raise money for "Children With Cancer UK".

When brainstorming some ideas we thought it would be really fun to design an Arduino-based game called "stop the light".

There would be a row of 11 LEDs all green with a red one in the centre and an industrial 22mm pushbutton on one side. The LEDs would sequence up and down and the aim of the game is to stop the sequence on the centre LED.

Pay a pound, get a chocolate if you win and it's all for a great cause!

Having already got a prototype working with a (sketchy) sketch, I though our FabLab trip would be a great place to design and laser cut an enclosure. I sketched out a rough idea of how it should look whilst travelled by train.

 pdfresizer.com_2017-05-29_16-55-page-001__12261fae3d189852d9804739d510edabdc9c5fcd.jpg

 

I'll post separately about the specifics of the FabLab visit but suffice to say - FabLab London is incredible!

Tony Fish of FabLab London was really excited to let us work on the project in the space so I headed straight for the laser cutter!

After an induction on the equipment from Josh (job title: Lab Magician), We designed the case using http://www.makercase.com, downloaded as a PDF and converted to a vector file type to be interpreted by the Laser Cutter. At this stage, we added the holes for the LEDs and sent the job.

This was my fist time using the various pieces of software needed for this process, I certainly needed a hand with a few things but once Josh and Rosie (an intern at FabLab) had finished with me I was a pro.

 

IMG_0813%5B1%5D_5054b5cbeb9e16c392e2efa9e2dcd7a25bd56677.jpg

IMG_0815%5B1%5D_0b308d8988ebe15771fb0ed07213386d7bf0c1bf.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was really happy with the enclosure straight off the bat, although Josh advised that we could tweak the intensity and speed of the laser to reduce the charring around the edges. I reckoned that charred edges are all part of having a laser cut Ply Wood enclosure and that it looked fine.

Tony had offered to keep one of the finished boxes around at the Lab so we cut another enclosure and set to work on the logos for the side.

After a quick call to the charity to check it was okay to use their logo, Josh & Rosie helped me get the images set up for vinyl cutting. The process was pretty similar to the laser cutter and I must give credit where it's due, Rosie ended up doing most of this for me whilst I attended to some other business.

In the end, we (she) used the laser cutter to engrave the intricate "Children With Cancer UK" logo and the vinyl cutter to cut out the "RS" & "FabLab" logos.

IMG_0817%5B2%5D_b2fc0e92c4db592820e85ce8f8bb01d3cbd7491a.jpg

 

FabLab logo to follow.

I'm really happy with the project so far and can't wait to post my progress in the coming weeks. I'm currently thinking that I might replace the Arduino with a RaspberryPI and camera so that if you win, the machine takes a selfie and posts to Twitter using node-RED.

I also want to make some kind of coin acceptor, I'm toying with a 3D Printed chute and a photoelectric sensor. Thoughts appreciated below!

Here's a kind of visual diary of my day making this great project:

stu.law222 has not written a bio yet…
DesignSpark Electrical Logolinkedin