Week 10 - September 12-18

This week the group met to assign tasking for the week as well as to complete some tasks. Together the group designed the user control module which will be modeled and prototyped/tested by Victoria. A rough drawing of the module is shown in Figure 10.1. The module will house the Polulu IR Beacon Transceiver, and the 9v battery to power the transceiver. The housing for the devices will allow the user access to the switch to turn the battery pack on/off, and will have windows so that the IR beacons can see out while being shielded from interference above and to the sides of each sensor. It was decided by the team that only three IR signals were needed for the user module to work properly and so one beacon will be covered or removed.

The next task completed by the group was going over the main board code and deciding how the primary board is going to communicate with the secondary board. It was decided that the primary board is going to receive the information from the environmental sensors and interpret that to decide which direction the rover should turn. From there, the primary board will send a 3-digit binary code to the secondary board. Table 10.1 shows the legend of which movements correspond to each code.

Table 10.1: Binary Code Corresponding to Movements

After receiving the code, the secondary board will interpret that code into wheel movements. It will then communicate to the appropriate motor driver about which wheel should turn in which direction. Table 10.2 shows the wheel rotation based on each code/direction received.

Table 10.2: Wheel rotation Corresponding to Interpreted Binary Codes

This information will be used to start creating the program for the motor drivers. Each motor driver will be assigned 2 motors and will need to receive direction from the secondary controller and apply power to the appropriate motor to move the cart to where it needs to be.

Group assignments are as follows:

Jesus - Add functionality to the manual buttons and verify with the use of LED's. Add IR tracking functionality into primary controller program. Test sensors and verify detection angle.

Victoria - Continue work on Project Report. Finish chapter one and start working on chapter 2. Model the designed User module device and 3D. Continue cart assembly.

Each group member should also complete the weekly tasks of updating the Time and Effort log, and writing a blog post for the progress log.