Update 17: Creative Title #4

Source: My phone

I finished a week early so I really don't have much to talk about. I decided to mimic someone I heard earlier who took a photo of their dog for a photo, so here is my bulldog Lucy. Uh..... I guess I've already sorta figured out the presentation aesthetic, which is cool. I also realized that I did have my my life packet on Monday it was just in a weird spot, so oops. That's really it, unless you want me to talk about Avengers lol(cause that was super hype). I wish I had more to put here but everything I said last week I expected to put in this week. The end?

Update 16: Form over Function?

Source: My floor and horrible lighting in my house for photos

During break my grandpa and I worked on and finished a show model. This does not work whatsoever, but it shows what a working version that could actually be sold and used would look like. It kinda looks like a small iPhone lol. The panel is longer and thinner to fit an arm better, but is the same area (I hope anyway, I spent a while measuring it). It even has a 3D power button on the side that's actually just a screw. In the presentation, I will use this along side the working yet ugly and unwearable version

Update 15: Eureka!

Source: My phone

We did it reddit. It functions. It's smaller. And it functions fairly competently too. I think that I am going to have this model stay the same, as sort of a "function" model, and create another model that is just for show, the "form" model that will be used along side this for the presentation. This is the plan elusively because the battery is still too big, and while I can likely fix this, the cost and effort wouldn't really be worth it. But yeah, it finally works, yippee!

Update 14: New Stuff

Credit: Google
This week, I mainly got supplies so that the second attempt is hopefully the last one. I bought another copy of the last pack I used because it was the cheapest, easy to dismantle, and has a useful circuit board which should make my life 10x easier. The more important addition was these small solar panels. They are already small so I don't have to worry about cutting them, and they deal with the proper amount of voltage. Also good news, it came in a set of a lot so I can have multiple attempts without getting more

Update 13: First Times an Almost Charm

Source: My iPhone Camera

So I finally got to attempt the whole shrinking a solar panel and having it still work thing and BOY was I close. I first disassembled the charger pack with relative ease, and disconnected the solar panel from the circuit board and the battery. I then sliced the sides of the panel off that were not attached to any wireing, and it seemed to be working at full power still. When I cut down the middle and into wires, it got hairy. Even though I reattached the two ends of the circuit and it should have worked, the panel was much weaker which makes sense. The issue is when I reintegrated the panel into the whole setup, it seems to not charge the battery as the green indicator light wont turn on. I won't know for sure, as I have to drain the battery first(as it already had charge when it was delivered) so I don't know 100% if it worked yet, but I kinda doubt it. Good news is, this is just one iteration of likely a few, and I know what generally works and doesn't. I will likely need to get a different pack for the second attempt so stay tuned for that.

Update 12: Party!!!!

Source: Google Images

I finally did it. I got the supplies. I went to Diddams and bought like 24 wristbands for like $6. Then I ordered the solar charger pack I am going to modify off Amazon, but it hasn't arrived yet. I plan to start modding the solar pack this weekend, which hopefully won't take longer than two weekends. Then I can just put the arm/wrist attachments on and hopefully the prototype(?) should be done before April.

Update 11: No more puns, time to hit the grind

Source:Google

That emoji represents me right now with the project. I'm not suuuuper worried, I just hope it all works ya know? I have everything planned out finally, and I hope to go buy everything sometime this week(the real question is will it ship fast enough lol). Im just now in the "please work out otherwise I need to explain why it did not work" phase. Yay. Uhhhh that's about it honestly. The update should be a lot more interesting next week.

Update 10: Band Ideas

Credit:Amazon

So I think I am finally not doing the Fitbit idea (so it's banned, like the title[I really need to get at least better puns if I am going to keep this up lol) because of two reasons. 1. It's not that cheap to buy just the band. 2. Even though I have a couple of my own to spare, I don't think hooking them up will be super easy, and even then I will need more than 2 for tests. ATM, I am seriously considering a giant bag of generic wristbands at like a party store because they would be flexible enough, comfy enough, and cheap enough, and I would get enough to test with a lot of them. That's about it for this week

Update 9: I think I am running out of puns for the titles, especially since this one is solar bad

I have recently had some fun working on branding for the Solar Band(originally kinda sounded like a solja boi product which is why it changed), and I have been exploring how the logo will look. At the moment, the current logo looks like the image at the bottom. It was created using a tool called Flaming Text, which is basically a really fun logo making tool. It has tons of font options and options within each font. I might end up making a custom, hand drawn logo, but at the moment, like the name, it will likely change, which is inevitable with development.


(Source: Flaming Text.org)

Update 8: Brand New

Source: Youtube

At the moment, the colors for the product branding is orange highlights on a black background. I thought, and still think this works for many reasons, but I now remember that Halloween and as you can see above, the San Fransisco Giants, exist. I don't think I'm going to change anything because of this but I need to keep it in mind. The other thing I did involving branding, this one being "brand" new, is the name. I think to stick with the teenager audience I'm going to use either Solar Band or the slightly slangy SolaBand. Other than branding stuff, not too much has been going on with the project, as I am gearing up to work on it quite a bit over February break hopefully.

Update 7: Charge of Plans?

Credit:Amazon

I am experimenting with a solar pack reverse engineering, a wiring of panels that isn't super easy, or some combination of the two. Either way, I'm for sure going off from my original plans, but that's ok tbh. This is helping me figure out how to deal with design constraints, as previously, my designs have not hit any major issues, so this is still overall beneficial to me. I hope to get my materials soon(once I decide on the method of making.

Update 6: Down to the Wire

So this miiiiight be a bit harder than I originally thought. Like good thing I cut it down to just one product. Basically, the connection to the solar panels via USB is a little more complex than just soldering something onto something else. I'm going to try buying a solar charger online, tearing it apart, reverse engineering i, or using it's components to make the bracelet. That's pretty much everything that happened this week. Here's a picture of it. Also I added an extra pic cause I forgot one last week oops.

Credit: Amazon.com

Update 5: Charge

Charge is going to mean 2 things in this post. The first type of charge is electrical. I'm going to start learning how to do simple wiring this week, and maybe even try some. Because of this, the first working version of the charger band that doesn't totally have a name yet is going to be pretty weak, and this might be the case for all versions cause of the panels power. It still should technically work though which is the important part. The other kind of charge is the charge of a credit card. I'm going to attempt to buy parts sometime within the next week. It will cost money which I will figure out, although I already optimized it so it's as cheap as possible. 

Update 4: Scaling Down

Big change: I think I'm going to cut the backpack straps, mostly because they don't excite me after mulling it over. They also would suck up a bunch of extra time, so I feel like if I focus on one product, then it will be of a better quality. My little project for this past week was trying to find an individual USB port for sale, which after plenty searching I have determined going to a store with my grandpa(the expert) would be the better option. Here is a picture of what I'm thinking about:


Source: Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange