Waterloo Ontario, University Ave.
It's a wild neighborhood.
But hey, it's home.
Why are you talking like that?
Uh, just, just filming a vlog.
I'm trying to remember my, my time as a Hacksmith intern.
Whoa it's Hacksmith Industries.
I've been watching these videos for years.
Oh my goodness.
It's the Smithmobile!
Okay, Caleb, this is the Hacksmith Industries electronics lab.
This is where you'll be spending a lot of your time.
Your desk is right over here.
Got everything you need.
Got your laptop.
Got some safety glasses.
You got your lab coat.
You should get suited up. We've got a project for you to start on.
Okay.
I will.
Thank you Bogdan, sir.
Alright.
It's a Smith shirt, a note from Mr. Smith himself.
Welcome to the team.
I can't wait to see what kind of projects I'm going to be working on.
Now, Mr. Smith did say something about augmenting human senses.
When people think of Spider-Man the first thing that comes to mind is web slinging,
and climbing walls. But equally as important is that spider sense.
Wait do spiders even have a spider sense?
It must be based on something.
They can sense vibrations.
So what, so can I.
Anyway, in the comics Spider-Man is able to
sense impending danger, dodging, punches, and even bullets.
However, we, humans just don't stack up.
That is until today.
You see sometime last year.
Mr. Smith saw a project by a guy who goes by Brain Devices.
He used an ultrasonic sensor and the vibration motor to alert the wearer of approaching danger.
Using advanced Hacksmith Industries technology.
I'm going to miniaturize the system and I might even have spider senses in three dimensions.
How cool would that be!
But first, I'm thirsty. Hacksmith.store.
Curse you gravity.
We picked up this awesome animatronic helmet.
Its eyes adjust so it gives you that classic spidey scowl.
Our plan is to outfit this mask with multiple circuit boards that
will be able to detect motion and then output a spider sense "tingle" for the wearer.
But it's not good enough to have the whole helmet vibrate.
The spidey sense not only alerted Parker to danger, it also let them know
where the danger was approaching from.
Well, the entire helmet won't actually vibrate.
The sensor will trigger a buzz in the location of the sensor
that picked up the movement.
So, for example, if someone dropped a piano on my head from up above.
The sensor on the top of my head would trigger the buzzer in the same spot,
alerting me to the danger from above.
Makes sense?
Now we need to make some decisions on components.
First we have the distance sensor. You may have heard of radar.
Radar sends out radio waves, then listens for it to bounce off objects.
It's then able to calculate where that object is.
This is a LIDAR, basically the same concept as radar, except instead of
sending out radio waves, it sends out light.
And this little guy can detect up to four meters of distance with one millimeter accuracy.
Now a sensor only outputs information.
We need a micro-controller to both interpret and use that information.
We've chosen the AT Tiny 85.
It's nice and small.
And it's powerful enough to understand I2C.
The communication protocol used by the LIDAR.
So to summarize the LIDAR is going to measure the distance
from the sensor to the object.
Then the LIDAR will communicate that information to the micro controller.
The micro controller will process that and send it to an appropriate output.
And in our case, that output is a tingle.
Now I just need to find something that'll tingle.
I've got a few ideas.
There are some requirements.
It has to be small,
has to be wearable,
and has to be safe.
Now, this is a shock collar, and this is a taser.
The taser doesn't sound too safe.
Anyways.
What were those instructions that Mr. Smith gave me?
Don't do anything I would do, and definitely don't do anything I wouldn't do.
There's a little gray area.
And that's where you operate.
Hopefully this falls into that category.
Well, here goes nothing.
Okay. Not safe.
Taser?
Whoa Caleb...you okay?
Doin pretty good.
I was thinking like, what about using one of those things that makes the cell phone vibrate?
That that would be a better idea.
Okay.
Yeah, let's do that.
Today was crazy.
Probably shouldn't have tased myself, but I wanted show that I was committed
to the project, you know?
Wanting to contribute.
And contributed by learning shouldn't you shouldn't use a taser.
We're going to be using a vibration motor.
So simple.
Why didn't I think of that?
Well, I'm happy to make a prototype tomorrow.
It's going to be good.
And I hope Mr. Smith is impressed.
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free pair of Bluetooth headphones.
Before I design and order the PCBs,
I'm going to build a functional prototype to make sure that all of these components work together as expected.
I wrote a program for the AT Tiny that will read distances from the LIDAR
and make the vibration motor pulse differently depending on how far away an object is.
As you can see, the AT Tiny doesn't have a USB port.
So, how am I going to get the program on there?
If I can't connect it to my computer?
Well, the Arduino UNO does have a USB port and I can connect my Tiny to the UNO.
Then I'll be able to flash the chip.
Now it's called flashing because the process wipes all the previous memory off of the AT Tiny
and then uploads a new program.
And then voila! It's now uploading, as you can see from all this text moving by.
I'm going to make my prototype on this breadboard, because it allows me to
easily connect all of our components.
Micro controller, LIDAR and vibration motor.
Everything's plugged in and it looks like it's working well.
I can't think of a better way to demonstrate than some action figure theatre.
Just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
keeping an eye out on the neighborhood.
Hopefully no bad guys started approaching me from behind.
Ah ah ahhh it's Doctor Octopus.
I'm going to come and say hi to Spiderman.
Hopefully his spider senses aren't tingling faster
as I approach him linearly from behind.
Da da da daaa. I've been found.
I will retreat.
As you can see the I2C bus between the LIDAR and microcontroller
is working just as expected.
I2C is super cool.
Without it, this project would not work at all.
It's a multi-master, multi slave, packet switch, single ended
Whoa whoa whoa...WHAT??
I2C stands for Inter Integrated Circuit Protocol.
It's like a language that is used to communicate between different components
like our LIDAR and AT Tiny.
The advantage of using I2C is that many components can be connected and
all communicate between each other.
Each device sends and receives signals over just two wires.
For our project, the LIDAR breaks down the distance measurement into a signal.
That is sent over the two wires.
The microcontroller is connected to the same two wires.
This allows it to receive the signal from the LIDAR.
The microcontroller then looks up the signal in a library to see what it means.
There, you happy with that explanation, Mr. Camera Bossman sir?
Can I get on with the PCB design?
This is going to be the sensor board.
It will contain the AT Tiny, the LIDAR, the vibration motor.
We're going to order a bunch of these so that we can put them
all around the helmet and get the spidey sense working from all angles.
Sketching this out really helps me plan what I'm going to do when I hop into Altium designer.
All the connections from this prototype need to be represented as lines on this schematic.
If you want to see the full diagram and all of it's digital glory, check it out on maker.io.
using the link in the description below.
With all of our components mapped out
our next step is to hop into Altium Designer and lay out the board.
I've put all the components close together as possible to keep this board very small.
If you would like to see the layout of our board, you can check it out using Altium Viewer.
Another day in the can.
Got to say that video team sort of annoying.
Josh just kept on interrupting me and asking me to take it slower.
I mean, how do you make it onto the Hacksmith's team without
having a solid base of programming fundamentals like I2C and flashing?
Oh well, I had to bring it down to like five-year-old level and bust out some toys to explain it to him.
But tomorrow it's going to be a good day.
I'm going to be designing the power board.
And I got a special idea in mind for that.
And I'm also going to get to build a bunch of the boards, which is going to be pretty hype.
All these boards need to get sewn into the Spider-Man mask.
Now a rigid board would be uncomfortable and would poke out of the side of the mask,
but I did some digging and I found out that you can order flexible PCB's.
Can you believe it?
So I went and ordered some.
Now all that's left is to take these boards and my bag of LIDAR's and AT Tiny's
and put them all together.
With great power comes great responsibility.
This is my gift, my curse. Who am I? I'm Spider-Man.
The AT Tiny and the LIDAR are permanently attached to the front.
Next step is to solder the vibration motor onto the back of the PCB.
Alright we have all of the components attached now, all that's left to do is to plug this into a
power supply and make sure that it works.
If all goes well, you're going to see this little light turn on and the
motor will start to vibrate.
If things don't go well, something might start smoking.
With the boards completed and working, I'm ready to integrate them with the Spiderman mask.
Thankfully, Aunt May's a real gem and she lent me her sewing supplies.
I'm going to cut multiple holes in this mask.
So the LIDAR can peek through.
Then I'll attach them with needle and thread.
It's all done. Now we're ready for some action.
Alright. The system's complete.
Oh my goodness guys, come on.
We talked about this.
I can still see you and I could hear, but we're going to fix that.
So I shall be wearing these earbuds to blast some groovy tunes.
And to deal with my ability to see, I'll be wearing a blindfold for the whole test.
Alright, now that I'm blindfolded and listening to loud music, I can neither see, nor hear
when and where these balls are coming from.
So they're going to drop them one at a time.
And I won't know which one or what time they're coming.
Hopefully the spider sensors will alert me to both of those details.
Got the reflexes of a dead tiger.
Oh, come on guys.
I don't even have a sensor on the front that was just rude.
The thing is the system's working as expected.
I mean, I could, I could hear the thing vibrate has the ball was coming.
I'm just a human though.
So I didn't react fast enough.
I was getting closer.
So I think let's try a few more times
and see if I can get this.
Close.
Air ball!
Oh my goodness.
Probably should've put a sensor on my forehead.
Alright, that was a bit better.
I'm glad I was able to at least block a few, but there is
another way we can test this.
Let's go for a walk.
So as I walk forward, I can feel it lightly pulsing.
And I programmed it.
So it pulses depending on how far away something is.
So I know there's a wall over here.
Oh, it stopped pulsing.
Nope.
No, it hasn't.
Nevermind.
Okay.
And..okay.
No pulse is on my left, which means I can go left.
Now, if I go forward.
I'm doing alright.
Feeling pulses on both sides.
And now I got to wait until this one stops pulsing and then I'll know that
there's an opening, like right over here.
Alright.
They're both pulsing.
There's something nearby.
No pulsing.
That means I'm in a wide open space, which means I have no direction.
Ooh, dark alleyway.
You wonder how I do in a fight.
Though I can't dodge bullets.
I can probably dodge some slow motion punches.
Owen over here has been training for a month to prepare for this very moment.
Bring it on.
Well, my spidey senses are telling me that I'm pretty tired.
Like we're, we're done the test.
You can go,
Man.
My Hacksmith Industries internship has been incredible.
I mean, I get to work on projects like this.
This had a LIDAR, flexible PCBs, the whole works.
I'm really thankful that Hacksmith has let me work with all
sorts of interesting technologies and build really cool projects.
Getting to know the team was great.
Everyone works super hard to make these videos happen.
I mean, there's lights on me because someone put them there and that wasn't me,
but they they're doing a great job.
With this project, I'd say in the future, probably would have spent a little more time fine tuning the programing
so that I could react better to things coming at me.
But that's the thing with engineering.
You have to build something and fine tune it, and keep on making changes, keep on making it better.
And yeah, I'm really thankful.
It's been a great time here and I'm going to miss it.
I am intern no more.