What are you being graded on? Origiality? Execution of idea? Feasibility? Performance for task?
So far as the power goes you can make it corded, you just have to be careful and diligent with your waterseals. Other sweepers that I have seen use either the jets or the vacuums for their power. Just jamb the hose into the already existant port and away it goes. If you plug it into the jets then you can use the jets for propulsion and put a little turbine in there to make the power. It shouldn’t need much if you use the water jets to scoot around.
Existing similar devices drive around the floor and walls to clean them. There is this net thing you attach to the side of the pool at one of the jets. It deflects the water behind it which creates a circular motion. Over time this circular motion will move the floating debris to the net for collection later.
I know that it is possible to have it cabled, or even atached to the pools own pump. But i would like to have it independent. Something that can be placed in the water easily and left to do its thing.
I know that this causes problems, but thats what ive got to design my way around.
Im being marked on a number of things. Incuding, although in only a very minor way the, actual idea itself. The main marks come from the research weve done, the suitability of our solution and our development.
It doesnt sound much to do in 7 months but im working constantly (I have 5 classes in total and they are all the same sort of workload). My course has a very high drop out rate. 17/05/04 is my D-Day. And its getting closer every day!
I think the remote control is a good idea, but I don’t get the advantage of the double wide mouth.
Let me just be the first to say that.
I think it would be best to make the thing jet-propelled and make the mouth/filter the jet intake. You could probably engineer it in such a way as that, when it bumps into the side of the pool, a purely mechanical lever opens a valve diverting some of the jet flow laterally to turn it around.
im interested to hear about this idea in more detail, ive thought about this for some time and could not come up with anything that was small and didnt overpower the look of the whole thing. For example i dont want a big arm to pick it up and turn it around.
I would like to keep as much as possible mechanical rather than electronics.
I’m going to be cruel (though I’ll attempt to only do it in a single post this time):
I don’t think the pool skimmer idea is your best bet.
It’s just that there really isn’t much you can do to improve on current implementations. Your proposed additions (remote control and wide mouth) are of questionable value for reasons mentioned.
As a consumer, I wouldn’t be excited by a better pool skimmer. And I suspect as a teacher I wouldn’t be excited by it either.
Again, I’m being cruel here. There’s no reason you can’t do your current project and have it turn out great and be a real learning experience in the process. But I suspect you can do better.
Coming up with a good idea is hard. A good process is to throw out as many ideas as possible, and reject none of them for practical reasons. Then start building on those, and throwing out bad ones and combing down to the one you want to do. Having a partner or a group to work with can really help.
Well, me and my big mouth. I’m sure pool skimmer will be a great project.
Perhaps instead of a remote, it should have a timer, so it can be set to run Tuesdays and Thursdays at midnight.
As you current thinking is that this device will live in the pool full-time, perhaps it should have a profile to minimize the space it takes. Ideally, the pool would have an alcove, but that’s really not part of your device.
As this will need power and won’t be plugged in constantly, perhaps you can use solar power or a clever docking mechanism to recharge itself.
Having an automatic emptying function would be valuable as I expect that a device that’s 24x7 in the pool will be used when noone is around, like 2am. Can’t think of a good way to do this though.
Perhaps this could double as a pool game or have some other reason for being in the pool constantly.
Well it was kinda my idea that it gets put in the pool for about 2 hours a day just before the solar cover is put on at night. Or of course early morning before use.
Its to replace the time that someone would usually have to spend with a net.
I like the idea that it could be some sort of game.
If its powerful enough what do think of using it as a transport thing. You know how people grab hold of dolphin’s and get pulled around. That kind of idea?
My brother and I got these little battery powered cars from an aunt once. You just turned them on and away they went until they crashed into something. They had these movable bumpers on the front and back that were connected to each other and also this switch in the middle of the car. When the car ran into something it pushed the bumper into the car and pushed the bumper on the other end of the car out. It also flipped the switch, which controlled the polarity of the motor. So the car would then zoom away in the opposite direction.
Simple design that wouldn’t fail unless the car broke. Perhaps you could use something like that to move the diverter and change the direction of travel.
Ok, thought you would like to know where your imput has now taken me.
I’ve decided to get rid of the wings and double modes.
Am seriously looking into the option of using water jets as propusion.
Im also getting rid of the keyfob remote (kinda logical as getting rid of the two modes)
Im looking for a purely mechanical method of knowing that ive hit the side and to turn around.
Using twin motors, or now pumps, the device swims in a random pattern. One pump stops for a set period of time allowing the device to turn. Both pumps are on and the device goes straight.
So now the thing swims aroung the pool using waterjets collecting the rubbish from the surface.
What do you think now?
Im especially keen to find out what UncleBeer, keithnmick, Saltire, Bill H. and Mangetout think as they have really helped so far. But if anyone has a comment or suggestion, no matter how insignificant you think it may be, please add it.
Ok, thought you would like to know where your imput has now taken me.
I’ve decided to get rid of the wings and double modes.
Am seriously looking into the option of using water jets as propusion.
Im also getting rid of the keyfob remote (kinda logical as getting rid of the two modes)
Im looking for a purely mechanical method of knowing that ive hit the side and to turn around.
Using twin motors, or now pumps, the device swims in a random pattern. One pump stops for a set period of time allowing the device to turn. Both pumps are on and the device goes straight.
So now the thing swims aroung the pool using waterjets collecting the rubbish from the surface.
What do you think now?
Im especially keen to find out what UncleBeer, keithnmick, Saltire, Bill H. and Mangetout think as they have really helped so far. But if anyone has a comment or suggestion, no matter how insignificant you think it may be, please add it.
a) Why would I want to use your product vs one of the similar ones that are out there? (see my earlier post. Here is a another brand I found on the net: http://www.smarthome.com/3246.html)
b)Why would I want to go through the effort of putting it in the pool, taking it out of the pool, etc, when skimming with a net really isn’t that painful? Don’t get me wrong, but it seems like with the effort being implied, I might as well just skim it already.
I ask you these questions because these are similar questions my teachers would have asked me when I was at college.
Well as your link shows, this is not the same product. The products on the market at the moment clean the bottom and the sides by sucking as they walk along.
The idea behind my product is that it collects the debris left on the surface of the pool.
Well I do the poolboy job at home, and at the end of the summer there are loads of bugs and leaves etc on the pool surface. The built in filter just doesnt get some of the bits. It takes me a long time and sometimes i think more is going into the pool than i am getting out.
Is it really that much effort to put the light-weight object into your pool and switch on? It can be left in the pool before the covers put on or before the first swim of the day.
In todays society time is money, everyone is short of time and time is the one thing that you cant get back. This object allows you to spent your precious time doing something more important. Cleaning the car, playing with your kids or even making love to the wife!
Think what you could achieve with the extra hours that this product could give you.
Can you make it look like a frog? Maybe with a cupholder on the top? Then it can be useful for people lounging in the pool, too. Like a little servant with a tray, just ready to offer you a drink but also cleaning up as he goes. A little froggy servant. Named Boris.
On a practical level, I think getting a good algorithm to actually collect all the crud will be tougher than it seems. Although I’m not sure if you really need to solve this to get a good grade; I don’t know how grading will work.
Specifically, I suspect the easiest algorithms, like go straight until you hit something, then go backwards (or go at a given angle, or go in a random direction) will miss the “crannies”, and that’s where most of the junk will collect anyway. I suspect you want to crawl along the wall in one pass, and cover the surface in a series of sweeps. Both of those are non-trivial, and will likely require a bunch of real-world testing to get right.
I was thinking along the same lines as mnemosyne as I was driving to work this morning. (talk about distracted from reality). I was thinking about what I said earlier that you need an extra advantage to being in the pool 24x7. Having it operate as a game is one, where perhaps you throw balls into a bucket on the top, while it moves in random directions. Another is if it’s a robot carrier, holding drinks and such in the middle of the pool, or even delivering them from the side. Of course, you’ve now clarified that you’re not thinking of 24x7 in the pool, so perhaps that isn’t important.
You know, maybe scrapping the skimmer idea and making it a jet propelled game would be cool. Perhaps it moves randomly and people try to catch it, or hide from it or throw rings at it or something, or whoever it runs into is “it” and has to strip nude on the diving board or something.
Well, this is the sort of thing that was in my mind, but I should quickly explain that I haven’t thought about it particularly deeply and the diagram is necessarily oversimplified (the actuator rod, for example, would need some kind of pivot to connect to the rotating valve, which also needs to be sprung to return to the drive position).
Other variations on this method would be to use the actuator to turn a jet nozzle or a rudder, deflecting the flow.
My biggest concern with this design would be that, as the machine starts to turn, the actuator rod leaves contact with the pool side and the jet flow to turn the machine ceases. This could be overcome by having the rod ‘switch’ a water-driven mechanism like that found on an oscillating lawn sprinkler, so that, when the rod touches something, no matter how briefly, the mechanism swings into action, delivering a good pulse of water to the turn jet.
