Week 13 (Nov. 21, 2018): Pre-Thanksgiving Meeting – Max Charging Distance & Max Motor Acceleration

Although there was no meeting for any of the ME 195A students today due to the Thanksgiving break starting holiday tomorrow, I wanted to plan for the final presentation, Presentation #3, and complete some calculations that we all could include in our presentation slides.

I bought both the 12V, 600 mA and 5V, 2A induction charging modules, just in case one does not ultimately work out. However, we will try the 12V, 600mA one first. The max charging distance of the 12V, 600mA induction charging module is 20 mm, or 0.787 in. This max allowable distance should be accounted for when we design the charging station and/or hub with the Small-Scale Track Team. Recall that The Small-Scale Track team is planning to construct a Y-bend located in the middle of the track, and then together, we will create and install at least two induction charging stations within the Y-bend, acting as a sort of “pit stop”.

Also, I calculated the max acceleration that the gimbal motor will experience resulting from the 7.4V of the battery. Ideally, we want the pod car to move at a constant speed throughout the rest of the trip. So, the only acceleration we have to consider is the start-up acceleration to speed up from rest to the max velocity. The max velocity, given 7.4V, is 1.051 m/s. We can then say that we want to accelerate for about 2 seconds. So, the acceleration would be:

So, this would be the max acceleration if we want to accelerate to the max speed in 2 seconds. The Bogie Team will have to account for this when designing the wheels.

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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 maximum spe

Week 9 (Oct. 24, 2018): Presentation #2 (Primary & Alternative Design Concepts) Reflection & Eliminating GPS as a Possibility

Earlier this week, to prepare for our presentation on October 24, I looked into different GPS modules. Unfortunately, I concluded that it was not possible to implement one. Recently, I learned in my ME 190 class (Mechatronics System Design) that GPS is not very accurate, as it does not have a fine resolution. Within a 10-meter radius, the satellite cannot distinguish whether the object is at the 1-meter mark or if it’s at the 9-meter mark; in other words, the object that the GPS is attached to will just be a big dot on the map. To illustrate my point, a map is shown below. The top image depicts the position of the GPS user represented by a large dot. That dot covers 10-meters, as the bottom image shows smallest measurement that that can be achieved by zooming in is 10-meters. After travelling nine-meters in one direction, the GPS has not updated the location of the dot. Additionally, the object would have to be travelling faster than 1 m/s; we aimed to have the podcar travel at around

Patrick Barrera's Progress for Spartan Superway

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