Week 7 Progress

After contemplating over the current drumset that we had, group thirteen agreed to buy a new drumset. The current one that we have is more of a kiddie drumset, and the sound would probably not carry in a robot symphony. We did not pay a suitable price for these drums, and therefore the quality we received was not suitable for our project. The new drums we received were an actual beginner's set, and even though the set is meant for amateurs, the sound was way more audible and of greater quality than the last set.

Image 1&2: Mendini Drums
By week seven, for the most part we finished the whole design, complete with PVC pipes, a metal grid for the frame, and a wooden stand. While constructing, framing was the main problem, trying to fit all the PVC pipes onto one design and where it could fit. We used long PVC pipes so the golf balls could be held and we didn't have to constantly reload in order to play more notes.We can predict that it may be a little tricky transporting our project around, but it isn't impossible.
Image 3: Skeleton of our design
While wiring the breadboard and servos, we used 9V Amazon battery packs as our power supply, and we integrated them into the circuit. However, batteries kept expanding whenever they were connected for a certain amount of time, causing us to lose a few of our batteries. We couldn't find the source of why the batteries were expanding, since the wiring appeared to have no perceivable error. We were also advised to include a resistor in our circuit. This turned out to be a complication for us, because our breadboard was working fine and we had close to no idea where to place the resistor. When we did wire the resistor into the circuit and ran the code with the battery connected, none of the servos were moving. But out of the corner out of all of our eye's, smoke started coming from the burning resistor. Unfortunately, one of our group member's got injured and we learned the hard way to start from the highest ohms when working with resistors.
Image 4: 9V Amazon battery

Image 5: Circuit

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