I'm surprised no one thought of making a mechanism to tilt the board horizontal while it is being cleaned. but yet again this is only the 20th post.

Probably because most whiteboards are mounted on a wall. As impractical as this thing is to start with, limiting it to whiteboards that can be tipped would doom it -- especially since most such whiteboards are small enough that the value in having a robot that can clean the whiteboard for you becomes very minimal. I don't know what their use-case is (or if they are even required to take that into account), but the main ones that would come to my mind would be presenters that need to clear a large board while setting up or tearing down and so could set this thing in motion while they do other tasks in parallel, or janitors that could come into a room, set the bot on board and, again, be doing other tasks in parallel.

In the one video that was posted (not by TS), one glaring deficiency that went completely unremarked on is that the robot didn't actually clean the board! Given me a good quality board that erases well and a robot that walks across it erasing it is of little value to me (the use cases I mentioned might be exceptions). What I would want a robot for would be to do a good job cleaning a board that doesn't erase well.

 

Spray bottle and a microfiber towel vs a high tech robot doesn't seem to even represent an economic choice. Where is the justifiable need?

 

Spray bottle and a microfiber towel vs a high tech robot doesn't seem to even represent an economic choice. Where is the justifiable need?

I don't see one -- but these kinds of projects are often solutions in search of problems that don't exist. Ideally, course projects would strive to tackle a real problem in a meaningful way within the constraints of the course scope -- so the project as implemented might only tackle part of the problem or do so in a very suboptimal way and that's fine. But many courses that try to incorporate a semblance of "real world" projects look first at what can be done within the scope of the course and then try to craft some "problem" that a student or team can try solve. Those tend to be highly contrived and unrealistic projects. If the focus of the course is on microcontrollers and interacting with the physical world and not about engineering project management or systems engineering, then this isn't a cardinal sin. Sometimes courses try to at least address real-world engineering by asking students to critique the problem itself, as well as their solution, in terms of realistic considerations. Those can be extremely good learning opportunities in which the more unrealistic the problem (and/or the course-scope-constrained solution) the more opportunity there is for quality high-level engineering analysis.

 

I've got several whiteboards that are nonferrous. It all depends on brand and style.

@WBahn

i agree with you

That's why I used the words "MOST of the ones I know" ,

I think that's fairly clear, but thanks for the clarification,

 

Just to see if vacuum will pick the dried ink off of a white board. Shop Vac pulls 0.5 InHg. Placed the 1-1/4" hose end against the lines on the board. Nothing! When it rubbed along the surface it would break the powder loose and the vacuum would pick it up. So you would need a "sweeper" incorporated with the vacuum.

he vacuum cleaner will pick up the dust after it is rubbed off. THAT is how they work.

 

Probably because most whiteboards are mounted on a wall. As impractical as this thing is to start with, limiting it to whiteboards that can be tipped would doom it -- especially since most such whiteboards are small enough that the value in having a robot that can clean the whiteboard for you becomes very minimal. I don't know what their use-case is (or if they are even required to take that into account), but the main ones that would come to my mind would be presenters that need to clear a large board while setting up or tearing down and so could set this thing in motion while they do other tasks in parallel, or janitors that could come into a room, set the bot on board and, again, be doing other tasks in parallel.

In the one video that was posted (not by TS), one glaring deficiency that went completely unremarked on is that the robot didn't actually clean the board! Given me a good quality board that erases well and a robot that walks across it erasing it is of little value to me (the use cases I mentioned might be exceptions). What I would want a robot for would be to do a good job cleaning a board that doesn't erase well.

You totally missed the sarcasm of my reply. Most times the people giving answers to a problem here go to long lenths to make tings more complicated than needed. And the thread goes on for more pages after the TS solved the problem

 

I just saw a segment on the TV show, “Henry Ford’s Innovation Station” of a robot that can draw on a vertical surface. The concept might be extensible to this application.

The robot used two thin cables attached to the upper two corners of the surface. Two small winches in the robot can position the robot anyplace on the surface.

A balance of the winch power and the robot weight would be necessary to apply sufficient pressure to effectively erase the board.

it was tethered to a power supply. It notmslky is parked in an upper corner.

Sounds interesting and worth following up.

 

Vertical CNC router