Water Curtain Hardware Implementation

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INTRODUCTION

For our final project, we would love to build something that integrates a rts, science, mechanics, electronics and fun. We were surfing the internet for inspirat ions and came across with something that captured our attention: water curtain. Water curtain combines water, physics of gravity, mechanics of structure and beauty of elec tronics control to create beautiful artistic effects, letters, graphics...

The magic of water curtain lies in the solenoid valves on top of the mec hanical structure. Solenoid valves are essentially "water switches".

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In its normal state (open state), solenoid valve allows water to flow through. But once it is powered, it would generate a magnetic field strong enough to suck up a piece of metal inside to bl ock the valve and stop water from flowing. Water flows down to ground naturally due to g ravity. So by individually controlling every solenoid valve on top of a stand, we w ould control individual line of water flow and create beautiful artistic effects and pa tterns.

Most water curtains we found online are super scaled versions of water curtains that are very expensive and limited for high end shows and events. We found some limi ted attempts to create small versions of water curtains. Some failed miserably. Some succeeded but had almost zero documentations of their works. We took t he initiative to create an innovative open sourced waterfall design, which follows the de sign specifications of 1. Interactiveness/fun, 2. Modularity and 3. Repli cability. We successfully built the waterfall and a user friendly app interface tha t interfaces with the waterfall.

There are three modes in the app. Users can direct control the waterfall in real time and play with it in Play Mode. Users can also draw patt erns or letters on a square arrays sketch pad and display them on the waterfall in Program Mode . Last but not least, user can click one button to enter Enjoy Mode, which would start a soothing 1 minute waterfall show.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Lighted waterfall Device

A low profile, lighted waterfall apparatus for producing a sufficiently art ificial waterfall having a light source chamber, distal to a waterfall slot/pri mary outlet and substantially aligned on the same plane therewith, and a port for accessing the l ight source, such that
light source can be easily accessed, inserted, removed, repla ced. The light source chamber having a transparent, semi-transparent, translucent divider to shi ne light towards and across the waterfall slot/primary opening via a grooved spreading
manifold/area/passage. The grooved spreading manifold/area/passage configured to spread the flowing water, and direct the water as a fluid wave g uide towards the waterfall slot/primary outlet.

Fountain Having Background Surface for Display Liquid Running Thereover

A water fountain is disclosed for use in residential and commercial environments. The water fountain includes a support frame and a catch basin within which a recirculating pump system is placed. A background flow display surface is attached to the support frame for receving water there-over from the recirculating pump system. In one embodiment, the water fountai includes a fa?ade is placed over the background flow display surface, a portion of the back-ground flow display durface is visible throug h the apertures in the fascade, therby permitting visibility of the flow ing water as well. The fascades may include apertures of various shapes and sizes and in different arrangements. The invention also provides the use of illumination and variable recirculation pumps in order to achieve dramatic visual effects. The invent ion may include noise-reducing pebbles in order to bufer the noise created by t he falling water into the catch basin. The invention provides an effective self-contained wa ter fountain that can be used indoors or outdoors.

Luminous Waterfall Display

A water display is described having a lighting array emanatibg light that travels through a wall. Water flows down the wall to vary the apperance of the li ght that shins through the wall. The flow of water and particular lights being turned on and off may be controlled. Dramatic visual effects are provided including the apperance of moving art.

ATMEGA32 Microcontroller

The ATmega32A is a low power, CMOS 8-bit microcontrollers based on t he AVR enhanced RISC architecture. The ATmega32A is a 40/44-pins device wi th 32 KB Flash, 2 KB SRAM and 1 KB EEPROM. By executing instructions in a sin gle clock cycle, the devices achieve CPU throughput approaching one million instructions per second (MIPS) per megahertz, allowing the system designer to optimize pow er consumption versus processing speed.

The full specs for the ATMEGA32A include:

High-performance, Low-power 8-bit Microcontroller
32 ? 8 General Purpose Working Registers
32Kbytes of In-System Self-programmable Flash program memory
1024Bytes EEPROM
2Kbytes Internal SRAM
Programming Lock for Software Security
Two 8-bit Timer/Counters & One 16-bit Timer/Counter
Real Time Counter with Separate Oscillator
32 Programmable I/O Lines
40-pin PDIP, 44-lead TQFP, and 44-pad QFN/MLF
Operating voltage is 2.7V - 5.5V for ATmega32A
Speed grades is 0 - 16MHz for ATmega32
Power Consumption at 1MHz, 3V, 25°C

HC-05 Bluetooth Module

HC-05 module is an easy to use Bluetooth SPP (Serial Port Protocol) module, designed for transparent wireless serial connection setup.

Serial port Bluetooth module is fully qualified Bluetooth V2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) 3Mbps Modulation with complete 2.4GHz radio transceiver and ba seband. It uses CSR Bluecore 04-External single chip Bluetooth system with CMOS technology and with AFH(Adaptive Frequency Hopping Feature). It has the footpri nt as small as 12.7mmx27mm. Hope it will simplify your overall design/development cy cle.

POWER SUPPLY CIRCUIT

The power supply circuit is the important part of any electronic s syst em. Power supply circuit is used to provide power to the micro controller ,bluetooth module, s olenoid valve. Regulated output of +5V & of +12V is provided by the power supply circuit. The three terminal of the microcontroller provides 5V. The voltage from tra nsformer is rectified and filtered by the capacitor.

SOLENOID VALVE

A solenoid valve is an electromechanical device used for control ling liquid or gas flow. The solenoid valve is controlled by electrical current, whi ch is run through a coil. When the coil is energized, a magnetic field is cre ated, causing a plunger inside the coil to move.
Depending on the design of the valve, the plunger will either open or c lose the valve. When electrical current is removed from the coil, the val ve will return to its de-energized state.
The solenoid valve is designed for attachment to air-operated control valves.
It converts electrical binary signals received from control equi pment into pneumatic output signals which, in a binary fashion, serve to open or cl ose the final control element.
Small square frame unit, Pull type. Coil resistance 131- 10 wa tt (maximum), Pulling force 20 - 160g (25% duty cycle), Stroke 0.5 - 4.0mm.
Two way Normally open exhaust valve in a small package size. W orks well in miniature applications such as in Non-Invasive Blood Pressure (NIBP) de vices.
Offers low holding voltage.

GB LED LIGHTS

Here ultrasonic sensor is used to detect the obstacles in the way.

Features and Specifications:

Low Thermal Resistance
No UV rays
Super High flux Output and High luminance
Forward Current for Red, Blue and Green color: 20mA
Forward Voltage
Red: 2v (typical)
Blue: 3.2(typical)
Green: 3.2(typical)
Luminous Intensity
Red: 800 mcd
Blue: 4000 mcd
Green: 900 mcd
Wavelength
Red: 625 nm
Blue: 520 nm
Green: 467.5 nm
Operating Temperature: -25 ? to 85 ?
Storage Temperature: -30 ? to 85 ?

SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION

Operating System

AVR Studios

AVR is a family of microcontrollers developed since 1996 by Atmel, acquired by Microchip Technology in 2016. These are modified Harvard architecture 8-bit RISC single-chip microcontrollers. AVR was one of the first microcontroller families to use on-chip flash memory for program storage, as opposed to one-time programmable RO M, EPROM, or EEPROM used by other microcontrollers at the time.

AVR microcontrollers find many applications as embedded systems. T hey are especially common in hobbyist and educational embedded applications, popularized by t heir inclusion in many of the Arduino line of open hardware development boards .

AVR studio is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) developed by ATMEL for developing different embedded applications based on 8-bit AVR microcontrolle r. Before the installation of AVR Studio you have to install the compile r WinRAR. By installing WinRAR allow AVR Studio to detect the compiler.

Studio 7 is the integrated development platform (IDP) for developing an d debugging all AVR and SAM microcontroller applications. The Atmel Studio 7 IDP gives you a seamless and easy-to-use environment to write, build and debug your applications w ritten in C/C++ or assembly code. It also connects seamlessly to the debuggers, programmers and development kits that support AVR and SAM devices.

Additionally, Studio includes Atmel Gallery, an online app store th at allows you to extend your development environment with plug-ins developed by Microchip a s well as third-party tool and embedded software vendors. Studio 7 can also seaml essly import your Arduino Sketches as C++ projects, providing a simple transition path from Makerspace to Marketplace.

CANVASES

AEIOU SUMMARY

A: - Activities

This matrix gives the information about the observation done by us regard ing the usability We noted down the basic vital informations relating to t he activities of the device. We also approached to the various explicit sources in search o f the adequate information. Also the elements in which it is used as tool for some purpose were also noted.

E:- Environment

This matrix gives the information about the places where the d evice can be used.

Basically it covers the important areas where the high security i s needed as well serves the safety purpose simultaneously. Also the activity done by the product.

I: - Interaction

We saw the interaction of the various components in this and we got to knew about the specification and feature of the various components.

O: - Object

This matrix gives the information about the components used in this device. The components are ATMEGA32 controller, Bluetooth module, solenoid valve, power supply. All this components are arranged as required and circuit is completed.

U: - User

This matrix gives the information about the peoples who uses the product and where they use it peoples like to Hotels, Wedding halls, Gardens, Tourist places , etc for entertainment purpose.

Empathy Mapping

To define any user centric problem we need to know the purpose of making it and the users properly. That was what th is canvas was all about. We thought of so many areas where it can be easily implem ented and that's also with major profitable aspects of it.
The users are the persons who want to safeguard the particular area with the help of technology as well this basically serve s the military purposes where it can save the precious lives at border and can help to cut the manual labour and as well government authorities.
Stake holders can be named as a team who are famili ar with the devices used in our project in there day to day life.
We went through Hill station to observe how the water f lows and fall down from that we decided to make some water curtain.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT CANVAS

In this version of canvas our main product development issues have been disc ussed as we conclude our project in the last semester of our design engineering subj ect. This canvass mainly will be concluded and also developed after we design our proje ct.

IDEATION CANVAS

In this canvas we tried to elaborate ideas and thoughts towards our proje ct topic by mainly focusing on activities, what different types of props and possible solutions will occur. Also the people involved and finally the location and on the situati ons for which we will work. On the basis of the study, we made possible solutions.

EXPECTED OUTCOMES

This project is easy to manipulate for anyone as long as he/she has learned how to use the Processing app we designed. The user interface has been designed to make the manipulation as trivial as possible and all buttons are labelle d in a clear manner to instruct the users about what to do. Thus, from this perspective, this project has great potential to be implemented as a open-source project for further update.

In this project, till now we have studied reasearch papers we can di splay the patterns on the waterfall. As it is most likely to entertainment purpose, user can easily operate the functions of displaying patterns.

CONCLUSION

The waterfall project is a great interdisciplinary project that integrates arts, science, mechanics, electronics, software and fun all in one place to make a legit product project. We are very glad that we did not and managed to integrate water grac efully with electronics to create beautiful artistic effects!

The hardware component of our project and the actual functionalities will not have any potential influence to others' safety as we did not use any hazardous units or com ponents in our hardware design. We have also stated the entire process of t he designing phase in our report and clearly stated the issues within our current design in this report. Moreover, we have provided certain degree of insights into how we can potentially r esolve this issue, which serves as the source for further improvement. Last but not least, this project is also implemented from the perspective of promoting it to be an open-s ource project, which welcomes anyone interested to modify and upgrade the features wi th no intentions of discriminations or exclusions.