Week 2 1/31 light presentation

Today we had a lighting presentation about what we have done over the winter break. We gave a brief overview of the tasks that we have accomplished and what are going to do next. We are planning to replace parts from the rapid prototype with a bigger motor and a corresponding motor driver. It will have enough torque and power to drive the bogie back and forth.

Week 1 Spring 2018 semester begins!!

Spring 2018 semester officially began today! This is my last semester at San Jose State University and I am excited about this upcoming semester and graduation. In this semester, we are entering the manufacturing phase which means we need to purchase parts and put every piece together for Maker Faire. We need to purchase a motor and a motor controller to give the correct voltage output for the control system. It will transform our rapid prototype to the actual operational prototype. We have already picked on a brushless motor and a motor controller online. After the budget gets approved, we can order the parts and start doing testing when they arrive.

Week 14 & 15 presentation 3

These two weeks were our third presentation. We have successfully finished our design and it's ready to present to the class. We have made a controller with a joystick and RF module which control the speed of the motor wirelessly. The receiver receives the input signal from the controller and spin the motor with different speed based on the input on the controller. Also, we implemented a kill switch feature on the joystick where it stops the motor when the button is clicked.
As we are finishing up with the semester, we have started to document our design. In order to have other individuals to read what we have done for this project, we have to clearly write our report which includes our ideas, approach, testing, solution, and result. We have started the report since we just finished our last presentation. Report will be finishing up in the next week before 12/18.

Week 12 & 13

In the past 2 week, I have been doing meeting with my team to discuss and work on the control system. The wireless modules have come in and we have been trying to figure out how to implement it into our system. In order to have a controller and a receiver system, we decided to have two micro controller for our system. The controller will have one micro-controller with the joystick to process the input signal and send it to the receiver unit. The receiver unit will have a micro controller with motor, and motor driver to receive input from the controller and execute it to spin the motor. We are trying to understand how the library work and integrate the wireless modules to our system. And here is a wireless module that we use for our system.

Week 10 &11 Presentation 2

Since my group didn't present last week, today was our turn to present our progress to other sub teams. In the presentation, we have talked about our goal of Spartan Superway project as a whole. We listed out of semester end goals and also our progress on our control system. We have made a working prototype but we are still waiting for more parts to come in. After the presentation, we continue to work on our prototype and start to speed things up since there is only one month left before semester ends. We have to finalize our design and start to do documentation for our project. Besides the regular class meeting on Wednesday, our full scale team decided to meet up on Friday to discuss and cooperate on the design. I am looking forward to the meeting, so we can give each other feedback and advices.

Week 9 Presentation 2

Today was the date for presentation 2. Because we presented as the first group in presentation 1, we were scheduled to be the second group for presentation. Although we are presenting next week, we have already finished our presentation slides. Today, I sit in and listened to other group presentations. 1/12 scales sub-team presented their progress on their project. They have finalized their ideas and in the middle of the rapid prototyping as we do. I really like the 1/12 control team. They utilized the RFID tag to track the location of the bogie and send it to users device. It was a good idea which could apply to our control system.

Week 8: Preparation for Presentation 2

Rapid prototyping went pretty well. My team has received the joystick and the motor driver that we ordered. We read the instruction on the user manual and connected the joystick, motor, and motor driver to the Arduino. We successfully wired up the system and programmed the motor to turn clockwise and counter-clockwise. We couldn't control the speed but we are working on it. Next week is the second presentation, so we have started to read through the rubric and guideline for presentation 2. We have started a google slide presentation, so my team can edit the presentation whenever they are available. I look forward to see the progress of other sub teams and their prototype.