Week 6 Electronics Compartment

After the meeting today with Solar team, we decided to have a battery on the bogie instead of having cables from the charger controller. We decided to use 12V lead-acid batteries to power our control system. Thus, we need a small box for the Arduino and a battery mount on the bogie. I already have an idea of how is the mount going to look on the bogie. I am going to start some 3D drawings on Solidwork this week and find to best fit for our bogie.

Week 5 Presentation 1

We have presented our idea today. We gave everyone a quick update of our project and a brief idea of what we are going do next. I have included the slides on this blog. Enjoy!

Week 4 First round of Presentation 1

Today is the first round of Presentation 1. We have finished our slide for our presentation but we didn't have a chance to present today. Other teams have shown their progress and plan for this semester. I am excited to see the final product of every team. It will look great after we combine our prototype together and show it during Maker Faire.

Week 3 Preparation for the first presentation

Since next week is our first presentation, we have started the powerpoint slides. We have finalized our bill of materials since we only need to purchase the motor and motor controller. We have included the rapid prototype of our control system in our slide to give the class an idea of how our system works. Here are the schematics of the control unit and motherboard unit.

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.