Homework Organization All-in-One

As an AP student from Independence High School, I frequently find myself with a lot of pen and paper home work when I get back from school. What I often do is stack all the work on my desk to get a grasp of the workload. But this is quite messy, and it is a bit of a nascence when I have to look through the stack. I also often use the Pomodoro technique, a time management method where you work for half an hour followed by a short break, to improve my work efficiency, especially when I'm tired or demotivated; but this has a problem: it requires the use of a phone or computer, which often distracts me when I'm trying to work.

So there are 3 problems with my homework routine: organization, time management, and distractions.

When I saw this competition, I thought of these problems immediately, and thought to myself: what if I address all 3 problem with one integrated design? Thus idea was born. There would be an adjustable file organizer to organize homework/study materials, a locked drawer to put away distractions, and a timer + clock, all in one design.

I used Fusion 360 to prototype my design. Then I made a demo of my design with hardboard using some basic woodworking tools. Then I used an Arduino Uno R3, a 1602 i2c LCD display, 3 4-pin buttons, and a number of jumper wires and appropriate resistors to make the timer.

I began by drafting the design for the lockable drawer in Fusion 360. The dimensions are based on the size of a normal 1-inch binder that will be placed atop the drawer in the file organizer.

Speaking of which, next is the adjustable file organizer, meaning the dividers can be shifted horizontally or even taken off depending on the workload. I designed this tongue and groove mechanism to ensure that the dividers do not fall over.

Lastly, I decided that the timer + clock would be independent of the drawer, as you might want to place it else where away from the drawer. I measured the dimensions of the electronic parts that I'll be using, and used those to dimension the body of the clock.

After the design was finalized, now is time to make a demo of the design in real life. I originally wanted to 3D print the design, but then I quickly realized the 3D printers at my school are not big enough to print some of the larger components.

A friend then recommended my a good alternative - wood. I went to home depot and got the appropriate hardboard, and cut it out into individual panels for assembly. Some compromises had to be made in the design, as I did not have the tools necessary to make some of the finer details in the digital design.

First, I assembled the wood parts for the body of the clock.

Then I wired up the Arduino with the buttons and LCD display. Unfortunately, I do not have a smaller breadboard at my disposal, and therefore I can't actually fit the circuitry into the clock body that I made with wood in the previous step.

Now comes the fun part: programming the Arduino. I have very little experience programming in C++, nor am I particularly familiar with the Arduino library, so a lot of this step was a first for me. I went through the Arduino documentation and watched several tutorial videos, and was eventually able to make it work.

By default, it is a standard clock, and you can adjust the hour and minute using the left and middle button. When you press the rightmost button, the clock switches to/switches out of Pomodoro mode.

The code is here in this Github repository.

In conclusion, I think that this product does have some commercial viability. The integrated design definitely has a certain amount of appeal to a lot of people that don't want to buy multiple products. Additionally, there aren't a lot of products on the market for Pomodoro timers.

However, some parts of the design are quite difficult to manufacture, especially out of wood, as they are extremely small and precise. Namely, the tong and grooves of the divider and base are extremely small and needs to be very precise to function properly, which would make them somewhat difficult or expensive to produce.