Hi Everyone,
I apologise for another late blog post because I had other homework commitments as well. I can’t believe that it’s almost the last week of school and this is my last blogpost for my Semester 1 STEM course. Of course I will miss STEM lots. I worked really hard on my project and I am really proud of it. It may not be a significantly super technical project that has Auduinos, Soldering and coding, but to me it’s perfect. For the amount of time that we were allocated for this project, I am proud pf my work.
Throughout this project, I had an amazing experience learning and experimenting with solar panels and how they work. I think that apart from the improvements, that I have done the best that I can to make it work. I have tried to put as much effort in as possible. I enjoyed getting to follow my passion and research and plan something that I am passionate about and love working on. I think that this task helped me develop and improve many skills overall.
To present my work, I have an A4 blue display book with clear plastic slips that I am putting my work in. I have a total of 18 pages including the original drawings which I added. Here is the evaluation that I composed. Overall, I will miss writing blog posts and working on my project.
Until next time!
– Olivia 🙂
EVALUATION
Solar powered traffic lights
PROBLEMS I HAD AND HOW I SOLVED THEM:
Throughout this project, I had many problems and luckily found a way to solve them. The first problem I had was deciding whether to solder, use a hot glue gun or bend the wires to connect them together. I thought that I automatically had to cross glue gun out because I wasn’t sure if it would interfere with the energy flow through the circuit. I chose not to use a solder iron because I thought it might be too difficult and I won’t be able to unsolder a mistake that I might make. I ended up just bending the wires because it was the easiest process to perform and I could easily retrace my steps and fix any mistakes if I was doubting it or it wasn’t working.
Choosing the process of bending wires to connect them also caused challenges. I found that the paperclip conductors were very stiff and I had a hard time bending them in place. I also had to reassemble wires in the circuit to each other as they would always slip of. To fix this problem, for the LED lights, I bended them to an angle where the wires would not get past the corner. Another challenge in this process was connecting the wires themselves, I found it difficult to wrap the wires around the conducts of electricity such as the LED lights and the paper clip pieces. The final problem I had with the wires in general was stripping the insulator off of them. At first, I either cut too far, therefore cut the wire off or not cut enough, this would lead to me cutting the wire off too. After a few days of practice, I mastered the art of stripping insulators off of wires.
I had a few minor problems during the process of developing the materials list and costing. Most of the items on my list were difficult to find in some shops. Some of these materials included cellophane and small solar panels. The locations that I found these in were ‘The Reject Shop’ and ‘Jaycar’. Jaycar also had many other small electronic goods that would be useful for projects like this.
Although the topic of ‘Drawings’ came before the ‘Materials list and costing’ section, I found that for my project, I needed to know all the materials I needed and the size so I could accurately draw where every component of my project would fit. A challenge that occurred in the drawings section was deciding where the conductors of electricity would go so the alligator clip would be able to reach it, but also so it was efficient. My best and final idea was to stick them out of the back of the traffic light box (this may be a hazard as the ends are sharp). I also had trouble deciding which way the solar panel would stand up and how it would stand up, would it use columns or triangles. This part of my final product varied.
During the development stage of the process, I encountered a large mistake that I’d made. This was that I accidentally hot glued the side of the traffic light box which I would be putting my hands through to fix and place the circuit. In the end, I made a compromise and decided to leave the top side open, although this was a challenge, I eventually made it work.
The final challenge that I encountered during this project was putting the cellophane and aluminium foil around the circles of the traffic lights. To do this, I cautiously opened the front side of the traffic light box and stuck them on with tape. It worked in the end.
IMPROVEMENTS TO THE FINAL PRODUCT:
Next time, I would’ve like to make the covers over the lights (picture). This would be a good idea because the colour would improve the brightness and be better seen. I also think that the general neatness of the traffic light could be improved as some of the hot glue is messy and sticks out. I would’ve also liked to create a better system for them by possibly using an Arduino to code the lights. The last think that I would’ve liked to know, is that my final product worked with the solar energy as I have been unsuccessful with using solar energy.