NASA Console

(Shop Project from the Class of 2021)

The NASA Console is a Shop Project from the Class of 2021.
A senior shop project is designed to demonstrate the knowledge and skills students have
learned throughout shop class. Every year each senior shop class is tasked with creating a
project based on the theme of the assigned summer reading book.

The Class of 2021 was given the general theme of “NASA” from the book Hidden Figures.
The Robotics and Automation Class of '21 collectively designed and created a NASA console prop
that would play out the moments leading up to the launch of the Apollo 11 rocket. The project had
to contain factual information on the launch itself. The use of a Raspberry Pi not only aided in
satisfying the requirement but also provided partial visual and auditory effects for the final presentation.

The Raspberry Pi had a Python script written to it, which is meant to:
- Interact / Signal the PLC connected to one of it's IO pins via a relay.
- Display the stages during the Apollo 11 launch.
- Prompt the user to confirm information (removed by Ionic).
- Plays audio during the final stage where the rocket launches.

The Raspberry Pi utilized an Arduino to drive the relay in order to switch 24v logic for the PLC.

As the NASA Console aged, it's Python script had started to break. The entire console had slight
issues during the Shop open house of 2022, where the "rocket" didn't launch, but the sequence of events
still had played out. It wasn't until the open house of 2023 where the script had no longer functioned.
Ionic and a graduate from the class of 2023 had spend a little over an hour debugging the code, eventually
opting to "bullshit our way around it" to get it working for the night. The day after, Ionic had got permission
from the teacher to grab the existing code from the Raspberry Pi and modify it properly so the issue was fixed.
In the process of doing so, the source code was made public via Ionic's Github, for the code to be viewed and easily fetched
onto the console.