Doorway to Doorway allows users to convey a particular emotion, phrase, or message behind closed doors through colored lights turned on by twisting a doorknob on the other side of the door. Our project opens up communication, otherwise blocked by the physical barrier that is a closed door. In doing so, Doorway to Doorway can help communicate emotions before real face to face interaction, and possibly defuse oncoming conflict. The project consists of two knobs, one for the inside of the door, and the other for the outside, all wired to an Arduino. The knob facing on the inside of the door has a potentiometer that when turned will light up accordingly to a colored LED on the other knob outside. The LEDs within the knob on the outside of the door have a range of colors, providing the user with the ability to display a range of emotions, phrases, or other complex messages.

However, Doorway to Doorway did not start as the project described, but a panel of LEDs above the door frame and another with switches. To make the lights more visible to users, overall round out the project, and add more aesthetic appeal, placing the LEDs within a doorknob and using a dial seemed more progressive from the original concept.  

This week we worked on our poster and presentation. We first hand drew our diagrams then created them in Google Drawings. We also laser cut our "door" piece and spray painted it black for appeal. We decided not to glue the back piece to the box to allow easy access to the inside components. This also lets us turn it on and off easier. After this week our project is complete and we are done :)

Aaron helped us come up with the design and plan for the 3D printed doorknob for the final prototype. We designed it in Fusion and already printed one half of the knob. We also started collecting the code that we will need for the knob to turn on all the LEDs. We decided to program a micro- Aurdino so that we only needed one potentiometer for all the LEDs. Each angle will be coded to turn on a different color light. 

We discovered that the reason the code was not working correctly was that the Micro-Aurdino was not able to read the code properly. We switched it out for the Uno and rewired the LEDs to have male ends on both sides instead of one male and one female. Instead of using the battery pack, we opted for just a battery box with 2 AA batteries since the device doesn't require much energy.  We tested the wiring with the coding and everything functions properly.  The transparent top is finally complete and each knob has been formed. The final step is assembling and gluing all the components to the makeshift door that will be lazer cut outside of class. 

This week we tried to run all the wiring all connected together since we were able to complete a trial run with partially assembled pieces. We wanted to test the potentiometers ability to read the analog values and turn on the correct LED. However, as soon as we connected the Arduino-Micro to a power source, all the LEDs turned on and the potentiometer readings went haywire. We have checked the code and the wiring and are still trying to find the problem. 

We super glued the potentiometer to the opening of the knob and the two halves together.  We also decided to use a breadboard to connect all of the wires together. Instead of using batteries as a power source, we switched to a portable power source to power the aurdino and all the LEDs. We connected male ends to all power wires on the LEDs. Next class we will do the same to the ground side and design the transparent doorknob. 

We have one doorknob completed. However, we realized that the shell isn't thin enough to have the LEDs shine through. We had to restart the coding. Luckily we didn't have much that was added to the basic code.  We also soldered the wires to the potentiometer that will connect to the micro-aurdino. 

On Tuesday, we attempted to lazer cut our box with notches out of cardboard. However, the box didn't cut all the way through the first time and didn't fit together the second time. Sadly, we realized that we would have to completely redo all the work. On Thursday, we successfully soldered one of the connection from the LED to the toggle switch. This will be the same layout we will use for all 6 colors. We decided not to connect the LEDs until our shipment arrives in case we end up being forced to use 5 colors instead of the 6 we hoped for. 

On Tuesday we had an Arduino tutorial and were unable to work on our project. Thursday Ashton and I laser cut our cardboard box  to enclose the LED lights and wires that would connect to the control panel. We realized that there were a few mistakes with this model we'd want to fix in future iterations. We didn't notch the box sides to fix perfectly into each other, so this time we just hot glued the edges. We also forgot to create an opening in the back side to allow the wiring to connect the LEDs to the toggles. We were able to hook up one LED to see how it would look in a completed circuit.