The creation of a maker space has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for academic electives as well as after school clubs. Even though these opportunities are there, many students walk by the classroom without even taking a look. We wanted to employ the empty display case that was positioned directly outside the maker space, in order to draw the interest of all of the students who walk to class by this case.

We had many ideas about  how to use this display case. Our initial plan was to have a train that traveled around the top of the room, then went into the display case, and drove around in there. Although cool, this idea would have been extremely difficult to power the train, to get enough track to go around the room, and to support the track as it traveled around the room.

As long as we didn't go around the room, we did not have the latter two problems, but we still had the problem of how to power the vehicle. We brainstormed many ideas. We could have created a roller coaster like method of locomotion, where we use gravity and momentum to move the cart. We also thought that we could have powered track, like a normal train does, which supplies the cart with power. Both of these had problems. In order to create a roller coaster, we would have had to find a way to attach the cart to the track, and a way for the cart to go up the hills, in order to gain speed. If we were to buy powered track, it would have cost an immense amount of money, which was not going to work. We then saw something online called a Sphero SPRK. A Sphero is a motorized ball, which would be able to power itself to roll up hills and around the track.

The next question we had was how the track was going to look. Again, we had many ideas. We thought that something that allowed the Sphero to go into the room would be a cool idea, and really draw people into the room. We also thought that if we were to put the 3D printer, that we use for prototyping in the maker space, into the case, it would also get people interested as it is one of the coolest gadgets that is used in the makerspace. We also had a large mirror in our possession, which we again used to gain attention. When walking past a mirror, many people stop to look at themselves. We figured that if people were to stop and look at themselves, they would then see the 3D printer and the Sphero rolling around the track. One of the most important parts of the display case was that it should display previous projects from the class -- this would show passers by some of the cool projects being built in this room and build further interest. In order to do this, we used a curtain and pulley mechanism. The curtain was attached to an acrylic box which held the Sphero. Once the Sphero was in, it was heavy enough to lift the curtain, revealing the project behind it. Finally for the track, we decided that we wanted it to interact with the mirror and the 3D printer, and then make it into the box, raising the curtain. Therefore, we chose to have the track move from the top of the 3D printer, to the top of the mirror where it ran across, into the box to lift the curtain.

The final thing that we had to work out was how to build the track. One thing that we wanted was for the track to have a clear aspect, so that we could see the Sphero. We also needed the track to be sturdy enough in order to support itself across the long span of the display case. We chose to use a 2x4 for the base of a track, and to drill in acrylic sides in order to be able to see the Sphero. One problem that we ran into was that there was not enough traction on the track. We fixed this in two ways. First, we plastered the 2x4 with duck tape, to add a somewhat sticky texture for the ball to grab on to. In addition, we cut higher acrylic walls, because we observed that the ball was slipping when it came in contact with the walls. Although both of these helped, they did not completely fix the problem, and the ball had to go almost perfectly up the center of the track to make it up the incline.