Journal

Total Time: 33 Hours

July 11, 2025

First, we brainstormed project ideas and originally decided on an Inconvenience Alarm, where it forces you to wake up due to its difficult snooze function.
We picked out components and soldered the Raspberry Pi Pico.
We also created a CAD model for the case.

Time Spent: 3 Hours

July 12, 2025

Crashed out because unfortunately, we didn’t have motor drivers and we learned that DIY-ing an H bridge is very hard :( We got the motor to spin but it short circuited.
We decided to abandon the moving alarm and do a timer system instead. We soldered the Cherry MX switches & coded it to display the timer on the Console Log. We did this just in time to demo.
Then, we remade the CAD for the timer design & created custom keycaps. We wired up the TM1637 display and made it display the countdown.

Time Spent: 15 Hours

July 13, 2025

We got the front part of our box printed. We wired up the neopixels and ultrasonic sensor and successfully got it to be hot pink!
2 servo motors crashed the circuit so we changed it to 1 motor. It didn’t work for the majority of the day until right before the evening demos where we were able to demo again.
We finished the code for the lockbox system and continued working on additional features, like the sensor and LED.

July 14, 2025

Final stretch! Got the sensor and LED working and mounted it to a different breadboard. The high current from the sirvo caused the circuit to stop working, so we disconnected it and are relying on the sensors to stop people from reaching for their phones. The front plate did not 3D print, so we made elements out of cardboard. We continued to test and mounted the keyswitches, LEDs and sensor.