Final Project Week 1

For our final project, my partner and I have decided to create a system so that the children have time to leave the bathroom stall before the toilet flushes, as they are often afraid of the loud noise.

Our first idea was to have the children push a button when they are done, and the button would triger an ultrasonic sensor to start sensing as well as timing. If it senses that a child is in the stall, the toilet will not flush. If it senses that there is no child, the toilet will flush. And, just in case, if it has been more than two minutes and the toilet still has not flushed, the toilet will flush.

In order to flush the toilet, my partner and I created a design using the Lego Bricktronics motor. When the toilet is cued to flush, the motor will turn for a specified time, which will turn a handle that is attached to it, which will then push the flush handle down. The handle will stay down for a couple seconds and then reverse the process to it's original position, completing the cycle of the system.

Here is what the toilet looks like at the preschool:

Below are some foam prototypes of our design (button and sensor not included in the prototype):

The foam box is to prevent the children from touching the flushing device and to protect it from any water. 

However, this design ran into some problems when we used a spring scale on actual toilets to measure the force needed to flush a toilet. The motor we currently want to work with does not have enough torque to successfully push down the flush handle. We are currently exploring other options and I will post again soon with a progress update.