This is the second part in a series on a concept to encourage woodland planting; ‘Plot’. This project was my final year project whilst studying Product Design Technology at UWE. The aim was to encourage farmers to plant more trees by making the data needed for woodland grants easier to collect. You can read the first part of the series, Plot – The ideation here.
I believe in products that work. You only have to go on a lot of design websites to see some beautiful concepts and renderings of products, that have no proof that they work, and indeed are often implausible or impossible.
When it came to this project I didn’t just want to create a concept. I wanted to create a working product. Something that could, possibly, be taken forward into production. With the evolution of the research and the development leading more towards an electronics process, I decided to go all the way and start to prototype a GPS unit.
Just to add to the challenge of this, I had never done any electronics of this sort before, with the exception of spending two days coding a robotic arm to move a ping pong ball. This was in an entirely different league. Nonetheless, I went and bought myself an Arduino Uno and began to play around.
Tutorials on sites like Ladyada and Libelium were all really helpful, but very few people appear to have released code on creating data loggers using the Libelium GPS module (which I preferred due to its size). After connecting up the GPS, the Uno and an LCD screen though, I started getting GPS data through.
This could then be combined with coding for the buttons and a menu system. Again, there is little in combining menus with GPS, especially for someone with NO knowledge of coding. One incredibly useful site though was Coagula, who gives a really good analysis of a menu system (as well as the best code I found for one).
Once I was happy with the way the system worked, I moved down to a smaller board. The Nano is amazing for its size. It allowed me to fit all of the components inside a 39mm diameter tube – not bad for off the shelf components. If you wish to see how it all fitted together; the schematic is below..
This was probably the biggest challenge I faced through my final year. I have to say, it is a great learning process, but if you aren’t into coding, stay away from an electronics based project. If you are up for experimenting though, Arduino is the way to go. Some of the things you can do with it are unbelievable.
Tags: arduino, gps, graduate, ideation, libelium, nano, plot, plotter, product design, project, sketching, uno, uwe, woodland
