Unusual Switch

Concept

I tend to misplace and forget to carry with me 3 things a lot: my AirPods case, my wallet, and my keys. So for this assignment, I decided to create a tool that would incentivize me to put those things together in one spot and never misplace them again.

Process

I wanted to create a board that would make the LED light up when I had all 3 of my belongings on top of it. I started off by first building the circuit we built in class without the switch and creating an opening where I could add the switches. I used pieces of an aluminum container as my conductor to both lengthen jumper wires and act as a switch. simple LED circuitStep 1

Then I built the bottom part of the board: a piece of paper with a line of aluminum but with 3 openings that act as my switches in series – when there are conductors that connects all four pieces of aluminum the switches are all “on” and so is the light. At this step, I also lengthened my “wire” by using a double jumper wire.

Step 2

From here I built the top part which consisted of another piece of paper with small pieces of aluminum that would connect to the pieces on the bottom when there is pressure applied to them and disconnect when there was no pressure. This step surprisingly took the longest because my first prototype (pictured in the top right corner below) did not turn out as I intended it. Step 3

I ended up putting 2 smaller and one bigger piece of aluminum after some experimentation and seeing what worked and did not work. Here I faced the challenge of making the paper “bounce back”, disconnecting the wires when I removed the objects, and thus turning off the LED light. My solution to this problem was to fix the top part slightly concaved down so that the default state of my board would be “disconnected”.

Final Product

Circuit Diagram

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