The Ingredients

Aside from the team's sweat, blood, and tears, what were some of the other key materials used to make our project? It's all posted below!

Foam board x 2

2 pieces, as the front and back of keyboard

50 squares were cut in a 10x5 grid (resembling keyboard)

Foam core (large piece) x 1
Cut out into squares
Taped on top of the keys
Written on to indicate the letter of the key

Feature keys: A~Z, 0~9, space, enter, ( ) + - . , ? ! ' :  [total: 48 keys]

Bamboo Skewers x 50

formed the frame for the keys, and held the keyboard up

Rubber Bands x 100
cut and tied to hold the wooden frame together
worked as the elasticity that made the keys bounce back

Solid Strand Wires (22AWG) x 60m
cut and stripped using wire strippers and scissors
soldered on to the copper boards by a soldering iron on one end, and connected to a breadboard on the other end
these wires connected the buttons to the Arduino board

It was very messy in-between the two frames, because all the wires were in there!

Arduino Mega 2560 board x 1

borrowed from the library

would read and output the button's values (pressed or not)

Breadboard x 1

Borrowed from a friend

Used to connect all the wires from the buttons to the Arduino board

The above is just an example of a single push button connected to Arduino.

Miscellaneous

- Sharpies x2

- X-acto knives x3, scissors x2, plier, saw x1

- Cutting mat x1

- Super glue x8, White glue x2, tape x3
- Soldering iron x1 & Solder x10m

- Acid etching tank, drilling machine, steel wool x1
- 30m x 15m copper board x1
- Mini 6mm x 6mm push buttons x50
- Laptop x1

The REAL secret ingredient, though, was hard work and team effort. We could omit any of the above materials and still have a desirable outcome, but without those two things, the project would not have been successful no matter what other external material we used. With a high amount of esprit de corps, then no matter what the task, our team can accomplish anything and everything. And that was exactly the case.

If you would like to succeed, then make sure to boost the team morale and put in your 110% commitment to completing what you have to do. No matter what happens in the end, you will have succeeded either way!

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But, it would be useless to only have a list of ingredients without the secret formula, so don't forget to check our "Recipe" post to see how we used the materials!