Wearable

Rolling Robots InvenTeam

Hey there, my name is Sarah and I would like to share a few things I’ve been working on. 

These past few weeks I’ve been tasked with creating the physical PCB design and housing of the wearable device that will call the walker over towards the user. The design of the PCB went through multiple iterations as the electronics were changed and new ideas were thought up. Images of the second iteration are shown below; the first iteration was not CAD’d. 

Figure 1Figure 2

Some of the problems that needed to be fixed with this design is that it had included a part that wasn’t actually required and it didn’t have a designated area for the battery storage. 

The next design made use of a 3.7V battery holder. This holder extended the size of the module, promoting it from a necklace pendant to a watch. Here is the physical model of the PCB for the third iteration with the battery holder. 

Figure 3

The total length of this design was about 3 inches long, so the housing for the watch needed to be rather large.

Figure 4

This design of the watch seemed unnatural and blocky looking, so I made another housing design as a pretty large pendant.

Figure 5

This design seemed alright, so I went ahead and 3D printed it to test with the battery holder that we bought, and to give us a general feel of how large the wearable would be.

Between these last two iterations of the housing, the buttons were changed from tactile buttons to locking right angle buttons. Here is the new design.

Figure 6

After these designs, it dawned on us that hey, would an elderly person really want to wear a three inch long by one inch diameter cylinder on a necklace? Probably not, therefore I made a design that made use of a coin battery.

Figure 7

Though this design is compact, it was relatively new compared to the other design, therefore it didn’t get tested and such. 

After designing the model with the 3.7V battery, I worked on drafting the circuit board on Fritzing. Shown below is a preliminary model of the PCB; eventually the plan is to fabricate it in the near future.

Figure 8

I have high hopes for our team’s progress, and I look forward to seeing you all at EurekaFest!