Final Project: brainstorming, research, define goal, Pugh chart

Hannah and I are working together again for the final project. Our project is to create a device that will open a window shade in the morning and close it at night. 

We began by brainstorming what we wanted to do and what our options are 

Some of the things we had to look into were the type of curtain, when we wanted the curtain to open and close, what the sensors would read, and what types of mechanisms would work for the different types of curtains.

In the end we decided to go with a traditional curtain on a rod, even though the dorm rooms do not have this curtain. The shades provided by the college are barely possible for a human to open (my roommate has broken ours twice). This shade is the type that you need to pull down a bit before it springs up. Another option was the shade that opens and closes with a rope-pulley system. With this we thought that we could use the counts on the motor. Our fourth option was a shade in which you pull the sting down to open the window and then push it to the right to release the window. We though this would be to many motions for our machine to handle. 

With the curtain, we decided that we would have some sort of vehicle. We had a few option for the arrangement of the tires. One of the top and bottom seemed unnecessary. A car that pulls the curtain from the bottom wouldn't effectively open the curtain. We also thought about mounting a track on the wall with a vehicle on it that has a hook that would pull the curtain rings. Taking out the car we could have had an arm that extends and contracts from a motor centered above the rod. The idea that we decided to work with was two wheels on the top of the rod. 

Then we thought about the programming part. We thought about how we would want a curtain to open in our room. Both of us like natural sunlight so we want our curtain to open when the sun comes out. We would have a sensor read the sunlight and then open the curtain by driving across the curtain rod and moving the curtain loops. Then at night - either when it is dark or when we turn off our interior lighting- the car would drive the other way. I think we will go with two sensors for this if we have it read interior lighting. There were a lot of technicalities that came up- what if it was cloudy? too sunny during day and we wanted to close the curtain? a manual override button? what if there are lamps outside your window at night?