After realizing we’d be using Google Sketchup, a three dimensional designing program new to us, we familiarized ourselves with the modeling software by watching a few video tutorials demonstrating how to utilize the many tools of the program to construct our virtual weatherbox housing design.  Through practice, we were eventually able to use the program to accurately space out different components of our housing and make a realistic weatherbox design to house our PCB.

  Unfortunately, we didn’t have ample time to work on our housing, so we made a very simple design for our weatherbox adopting the basic design aspects from previous teams’ printed houses that were available to us in the lab.  To start, we took the dimensions of our box to be 3x4x3 inches so that our PCB (2.6×2.8 inches) could easily fit.  After making the base and sides of our box (left the top open), we created a total of six slits for ventilation on the sides of our housing so that heat could escape.  To prevent rain from entering the slits, we then added slanted panels above each opening.  To allow our antenna, which is connected to the xbee located at the top left corner of our PCB, to stick out from our weatherbox, we made a hole on one of the sides with its own protruding semicircle cover over it to protect the contents of our weatherbox from water damage.  Lastly, we created a secure lid for our house, making sure that the top was a flat surface to mount the solar panel ontoThe lid is secured by two pegs at the bottom that slide into matching holes in the flaps at the top of our house.  

Due to lack of time, we were unable to actually print our house, so we couldn’t test its weather-proof qualities.  It’s probable, though, that after subjecting it to the various weather conditions on the roof, our design could use an upgrade to better protect the contents of the house from wind and/or rain.  One element we could’ve added if we had more time is an outlet at the base of our house for any water that might get inside.  

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Created by klauritzen on 2017/05/06 05:41.