Water inside the Unit

[Katjo Mencanto (Jackalgirl)]

Hello, all,

I don't have a Crowbox yet.  However, I did watch the videos and noted something about the installation: there is no waterproofing of the inside of the food basket.

Has anyone tried cementing the styrene liner in place and/or perhaps using household caulk/waterproofing to back it up?  I imagine it might be tricky to get up under the shoulders far enough to defeat capillary action.

I'm curious as to whether anyone has tried this out, and whether it has worked to help keep the inside of the box dry (though of course if you have wet coins, you have wet coins).

Thanks,

 

 -- Kat

[Michael Kapp]

katjo.m...,

Waterproofing the crowbox is a futile effort. The coins chute funnels the water right inside. The coin magazine at the top doesn't help either. Hot gluing the edges does make a difference. I think the best you can is to try to minimize it rather than eliminate. That being said, I haven't tried too hard and my electronics are holding up after a year. 

I did design and 3D print a few things that helped. I 3D printed out a cover for the coin magazine. I think this stopped a decent amount of water. 

For the initial stages, instead of leaving the the food lid open, I close it and put the food on top. I designed a "food wall" to keep the peanuts from falling up. I started working on an individual peanut holder so I would get notifications whenever a peanut was taken. (instead of getting nonsense notifications from wind and whatnot). It is incomplete. 

Keep me posted if you make progress with waterproofing.

Thanks,

MK

[Katjo Mencanto (Jackalgirl)]

These are all great ideas.  It seems to me like a reasonable thing to do would be to extend the shelves for the electronics raft across the whole box, and run the leads from the coin sensor up through holes that can then be caulked.  It might take some extra wiring or securing so that when you need to mess with the raft, the sensor wires don't pull out the caulking.  Possibly also adding some replaceable desiccant bags to the electronics bay might help, too.   But if you did closed off the coin collection area, you could then put drain holes in the bottom of the box (if that's even necessary; not sure how much water is actually puddling down there).  I imagine there might be an issue with people who've got large hands trying to get into the bottom part of the box to clear out coins, but that could be easily solved with a toy rake or something. ; )

Cheers,

 -- Kat

[Adam]

I also made a 3d printed cap for the coin tray. I used electrical tap to seal the top panel to the body. Flipped the electronics tray upside down, added rises under the bread board so any water that may run down the tray won't come in contact with the electronics. I changed it the copper tape for it sensors and attached them to the wall of the Crowbox to avoid water coming in contact with those as well.  Lastly I drilled holes in the bottom of the Crowbox to let any water that got in to drain out.

I played around with a small 5v fan inside to circulate air around to reduce condensation, but that wasn't really necessary.

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[Michael Kapp]

Adam,

Do you have pictures of all those changes? 

Thanks,

MK

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Thank you,
Michael T. Kapp
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[Katjo Mencanto (Jackalgirl)]

Hi, Adam,

This sounds super interesting -- I'd love to see these pictures as well!

This morning I was dreaming up patterns to etch into the bottom piece to encourage water to run out of the holes; I have a tendency to overcomplicate things. ; )

 -- Kat

[Katjo Mencanto (Jackalgirl)]

I'm also wondering if it's possible that water might be getting onto/into the servo from the top (that is, if the food tray cover gets wet, does the water get into the system when the servo retracts the cover?).  I've been reading about people with servo issues, and it made me think that this might be a way that the servos are getting wet (since people are reporting issues with the servos but *not* with the Arduino, and you'd think that if the problem were water coming up from below, that the board would short out well before the servo).

 -- Kat

[Adam]

Adding the cover and making sure where the coin hopper attaches to the top of the box is sealed reduced if not eliminated all of water getting into my setup. Prior to that I lost two servers from water damage. 

Adding electrical tape to the top of the box also helps.

Using the IR sensor eliminates the need for the copper tape, so if water does make it thru the food hopper it will just drain out of the holes I drilled in the bottom. Something else that probably helps with keeping water out is I close the hopper during rain and at night.

This is how I have my electronics tray tilted. 

Excuse the mess. This was after a season of use.

-Adam

[Josh Klein]

These are great modifications, Adam. Thanks for sharing them!!

One of the big goals of the project is to keep costs low, hence the copper tape and related design decisions. Changes like sealing the coin hopper are cheap - and big improvements!

All best,

Josh

ᐧ

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[Katjo Mencanto (Jackalgirl)]

It seems to me that if you're going to be in phase 3 for an extended amount of time, that it completely makes sense to seal up the coin hopper with something -- tape, even caulk; you can remove caulk later.  And adding a cover is (imo) a must; I think that's something that could be very easily added to the current kit, as just a square of plastic with a shallow beveled groove cut around it so that it snaps in place with enough of a friction press-fit to stay in place (there is probably enough space in one of the print guides to support this; I haven't looked yet, but I'm willing to bet a reasonably-priced adult beverage of your choice that there's space somewhere for this).  

Of course, now I'm thinking of some kind of remote trigger for the Arduino, so that you can remotely close and lock the cover if it starts raining (keyfob: <bwip bwip!>), but I always overengineer things.

Cheers,

 -- Kat

[Katjo Mencanto (Jackalgirl)]

I don't know if your standard laser cutting service can cut grooves or whether it has to cut all the way through.  But if it could cut a groove, you could fit it on the transparent sheet if you moved the equipment sled piece over so that it's flush-right with the front of the food basket piece, as I've drafted in Inkscape, above.  What I'm showing here is just a plain groove which is roughly, not CAD-accurate, 3mm where the walls of the coin box would be.  If I were cutting this with my Snapmaker (if I could; I haven't tried), I'd likely make multiple passes at varying depths to get something like a slight bevel (so that it would catch on the top of the box better, but still let you press-fit it into place).  You could probably just do this with a rotary tool, too.

Cheers,

 -- Kat

[Katjo Mencanto (Jackalgirl)]

(Where "it" is a proposed lid for the coinbox, that is.)

 -- Kat

[Katjo Mencanto (Jackalgirl)]

Another way to do it, if standard laser cutting services can't cut partway (to make the groove) would be to do a two-piece lid.

This would take some extra work: you'd need to cement the two pieces of the lid together (so that you'd have a rim that can snap over the top of the coinbox).  But it'll all fit on the transparent sheet, I think, if you moved some of the pieces around in space (and orientation).

 -- Kat

[Katjo Mencanto (Jackalgirl)]

It occurred to me that you could do this, too:

In this, you could1) ensure the assembled (but not glued) coin box fits within the outermost ring/rim of the lid rim section, then 2) cement the outermost rim/ring to the solid lid, then 3) after the glue is set, use the partially-assembled lid as a jig to ensure that the coinbox is square (I'd recommend using masking tape at the lid-most end of the coin box, to prevent inadvertent cementing in the next step, 4) glue up the coin box half or three-quarters of the way, taking special care not to cement it to the lid or allow glue to run into the lid, 5) once box is set, remove it from the lid and finish gluing up the box, 6) once it's set, ensure that the middle-most piece of the lim rid section fits within the coin box (recommend laying it flat, and just making sure you can set the coin box down and have it fit over the inner piece 7) adjust lightly with files/sandpaper until it fits snugly, if necessary, 8) apply a small dot of cement to the center of the center piece, taking care that the glue does not squeeze out past the edge, 9) install in the center of the upturned lid and use the coin box to further center and hold it in place -- add a pile of quarters for weight and leave until cement is set, 10) remove coins and coin box and run a very light bead of cement around the edges of the center piece, if needed.

At some point, I will actually do this, though I don't know when. 

 -- Kat