Week 1 (Aug. 29, 2018): Group Assignments and Introduction

For the first official week of Spartan Superway, Dr. Furman introduced the mission and goals of the team. Past semesters have already provided the foundation of the project, so the main goal is to continue developing a monorail system suspended above ground, powered by solar panels. After a brief introduction, we were subsequently divided into our chosen sub-teams. I was assigned to the Small-Scale Controls Team, along with my partner, David Mapapa. However, the entire Small-Scale Team (Controls, Track, and Bogie) agreed to collaborate and communicate with each other to build a fully functional and effective small-scale model, comprising of the pod car and track.

(Small Scale Vehicle Controls Team - Final Presentation - ME195B)

Afterwards, Dr. Furman gave the Small-Scale Team a brief rundown of past semesters’ accomplishments, as well as other objectives he was hoping we could achieve, as the new Small-Scale Team. For the small-scale controls, he envisioned implementing several features: a differential drive system to prevent over-exertion of the servo motor steering the wheels when making a turn, which would lead to eventual striping of the gears within the motor; an inductive charging system to wirelessly charge the pod car at each station; and further development of the Android application that utilizes a Raspberry Pi and runs on Python to allow user interface with the pod cars. Research would have to be conducted to determine how to incorporate these features into the small-scale model, and communication with the other small-scale teams would be paramount to our success.

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Week 30 (May 8, 2019): Prototype Evaluation Day, Final Circuit, Incorporating 3D printed parts, Final Presentation, Posters, & Maker Faire

Today, we held Prototype Evaluation Day. Like the rest of the senior project classes, the advisor walks around the classroom, evaluating the senior project apparatuses, asking the student teams to demonstrate their devices, and explain their design, though processes, and results. Dr. Furman and Ron examined and inspected the Full-Scale model, then the Half-Scale model, and lastly, us, the Small-Scale Team. We had completed our circuit to power one pod car and one of the two induction charging stations prior to Evaluation Day, so we were able to successfully demonstrate the pod car driving around the track as well as the induction charging. While we were still troubleshooting issues with the tablet’s Raspberry Pi communicating with the Arduino, the Arduino is still capable of operating on its own, so we could at least demonstrate the motor driving the pod car around the track and through the offline stations. Depicted below is our final circuit that powers the pod car: Dep...

Week 28 (Apr. 24, 2019): Final motor selection – Mini-Stepper Motor

Since last week, we have been trying to run the new brushless DC motor; however, it is still difficult to control, let alone its speed. Therefore, we had to pursue our alternative motor, the mini-stepper motor that runs at 5V. Found in Arduino starter kits, this mini-stepper motor is accompanied by its dedicated motor driver board, the ULN2003, which is a chip containing a series of Darlington pair transistors. An image of the stepper motor and the ULN2003 board is shown below: Sources: https://www.adafruit.com/product/858 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CP18J4A/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 We were able to successfully run the new mini-stepper motor with the sample code included with the Arduino starter kit. One benefit to using the sample code is that it utilizes the Stepper library’s functions. One use function is the setSpeed( ) function, which allows the user to set the RPM speed of the stepper motor. We found that the ma...

Week 27 (Apr. 17, 2019): ME 195B - Presentation #2 (Prototyping Stage Continuation) Reflection

Today, we completed Presentation 2, which is our 5 th presentation overall, throughout the entire length of senior project, since last semester. Please refer to our Presentation #2 slides, embedded below. Covering the continuation of our prototyping efforts, we discussed progress on hardware acquisition, integration of components into a working circuit, and programming. Regarding programming, we were still working on the communication between the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino. And while the circuit is also coming together, there was one piece that gave us problems yesterday: the gimbal motor broke and so we had to order another motor that is not a gimbal but is still a brushless DC motor. An image of the new motor is found in our presentation slides below. While this was disheartening at first, we found that the gimbal is not intended for continuous rotation, but instead for precise movement, as they are used for cameras on drones. However, this was still a setback...

Patrick Barrera's Progress for Spartan Superway

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