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 29 (May 1, 2019): CAD of Induction Charger Hub & Podcar Door, then 3D Printing

This week, while David worked on the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino code, Patrick completed the CAD (computer-aided-design) models. We had to create 3D solid modeling of two parts: the induction charging hub to hold the induction transmitter coil and the pod car door to hold the induction receiver coil. Over the weeks, the CAD models underwent several revisions. The induction hub saw two revisions, with the third design being the final version. Because the 3D printer available to us in the shop, the Prusa Mark3 i2, had a bed length of 10 inches, we had to restrict the length of the charging hub to a safe 9.5 inches. Version 1 simply entailed us placing the hub on the side of the bracket and then screwing it into place on the bracket’s side via the two holes at the top: For version 2, in addition to placing the hub on the side of the bracket and then screwing it into place on the bracket’s side via the two holes at the top, the bracket would wrap around the two bracket...

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 26 (Apr. 10, 2019): Programming – Python and Arduino Communication

The Python code and the Arduino code are able to run successfully on their respective boards, i.e. the Raspberry Pi in the tablet and the Arduino in the pod car. However, the Raspberry Pi is having issues sending data to the Arduino via the XBee RF (radio-frequency) module, specifically the user-input data. Whenever the user inputs the pickup station, destination, and selects a pod car, the Serial Monitor on the Arduino IDE does not show any of the data. Investigating further, we plugged the XBee module into one of our laptops, then opened the XCTU software’s (the software which deals with RF modules) Serial port as well. Now, whenever the user inputs the stations, we can see on the XCTU Serial Monitor that the receiving XBee does get the pickup station, destination, and pod car number, but the three inputs are all found between jumbles of random characters. As displayed in the screenshot of the XCTU software below, if the user inputs pickup station 2, destination station 5, and sele...

Patrick Barrera's Progress for Spartan Superway

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