Project Sustainability

Sustainability fed into our design as we made sure that our wires were not too long, so we didn’t have excess and didn’t waste anything. We also decided to make our own shell using scrap and recycled materials. Our components can also be recycled and reused once we’ve completed and dismantled the micro mouse.  

Michelle

Over the course of the two semesters the team spent 120 hours as a group in the lab, coupled with external work on the project to ensure deadlines were met and progress was maintained, equating to approximately a further 50 hours total over the course of the project.  This comes out to 170 hours per team member, or 680 total hours.  During the 120 hours of lab time, lecturers and technicians were on standby to assist.  This adds a further 480 billable hours for the support network within these labs for a total of 1160 hours.

At the end of life for our micro mouse needs to be dismantled in a manner that allows us to save as many parts as possible ass possible for potential reuse many of the part will be eligible for reuse this including but not limited to the Raspberry pi Arduino board, motors and wheel, and the battery pack. Which can all be removed and ready to be reused. The frame of our micro mouse was build using scarp parts that would have gone to waste we have also built our frame in such a way that it can be disassembled to back into the scrap bits of metal, foam and plastic meaning that future project can also make use of the same materials that we used.

For any parts that cant be recycled or reused they will have to be discarded into the appropriate bin to ensure that the waste material is properly dealt with to avoid any environmental damage that may be cause by improper handling of the discarded components.  

Our plan for maintaining the website is to ensure we upload and and create sections on time and our website has an order and structure making it easy to find different documents and items on there. We also ensure we are regularly checking our website and keeping it up to date.

Michelle

Full Cost Breakdown of the Components Used to Build the Prototype
Micro mouse
The cost of prototyping includes the microcontroller, motors, sensors and PCB components. Instead of the Motorola microcontroller, this year we used the raspberry pi Pico priced around $4. This decision was due to its dual 32-bit ARM architecture and 133MHz clock speed opening the possibility for graphical displays and complex navigation/advanced features. In addition, the micro mouse uses a 14-pin DRV8835 dual motor driver to efficiently control the two Pololu 6V meatal gear motors (These total around $49.75). Finally, the PCB assembly was done manually using through hole components on a single layer PCB. Estimating the cost of this with the through hole components could be around $35. Manually soldering these components eliminates the cost of outsourcing the PCB reducing our total cost.

Full Costing of Overhead Resources in Terms of Lab Time, Access to
Technical and Academic Support
Beyond the cost of the components, the project requires lab access and support. Our resources range from soldering irons, 3D printers to very expensive measuring tools and testing kits. The technical and academic support provided during troubleshooting and testing was critical during the production of the micro mouse. Additionally, the software tools required to create the PCB design (proteus commonly used in industry) is costly and fabrication of the PCB also comes at a cost. The software for circuit design and simulation costs approximately $702 and printing the PCB is maybe around $25. Since the DRV8835 motor driver was incorporated, it was imperative that we optimized software within the Raspberry Pi Pico environment, ensuring smooth motor control. These software and hardware integration efforts contributed to the project’s overall overhead. By managing the direct and overhead costs, our prototype could be considered cost-effective (Still quite expensive for the final quality of our work. However, we improved our skillset and learnt what is required of an engineer in industry).