Swipe-O-Matic

Background: The OIT student developer team built a system that used a Rasberry Pi and a card scanner to automatically enroll students to email lists by having them scan their cards. This system is pretty incredible, but they only developed the software and a circuitry on a breadboard for this system. They are seeking to also have a nice enclosure and a more durable design in general.

They therefore reached out to my consultation group the DesignHub and asked for help with it. A friend and I were chosen to lead this design. I suggested that they should replace the breadboard with a PCB to increase durability, and that was my main responsability in this project. It is pretty simple, but I am happy to contribute to such an interesting project.

Especifications: It is very simple, so it has just a few points:

• Small Design and attachable to the Rasberry Pi.

• Cheap and replicable.

• Include 3 LEDs, 3 resistors, a switch and a button.

• Be fixable to the enclosure.

Results:

My PCB design was as follows:

We had to do a simplier version only one-sided PCB due to the limitations of the most accessible and cheap PCB manufacturer that we had access to. This created an issue for us because the Pi would be inserted from one side and the other components from the other. Therefore, I decided to solder all of them from the opposite side of where the Pi is connected to make the connections easier.

We are still preliminary soldering some components to make sure the whole system works as a whole, so the current PCB stage is as follows:

After we connect the Pi, we will test everything, and then replace some of the components soldered with the ones for the final version of the product. Unfortunately, due to some logistical issues, we had to pause the project for a couple of weeks, but it is back to activity, so we are excited to see the rest of it working!

Stay tuned to see our progress!