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SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 5/1

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 5/1 This past week, our team was finally able to make a lot of working components come together into a working system. With the wireless communication working, we were able to move onto figuring out how to controls the motors remotely. I started working with a simple 12-bit DAC so that the Arduino could send a solid analog signal into the throttle control of the motor controller. I was able to make it output a specific voltage, and then i was able to combine it with the wireless transceiver to control the speed of the bogie wirelessly by turning a potentiometer. With that working, all of the components of our controls system were working, so this last week will be focused on putting stuff together in an organized manner, cleaning wiring up, and working on the main program for the system.  

SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 4/24

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 4/24 This past week, the team placed an order for our custom PCB's for our controller, and we are continuing to move forward with writing the main program for the system. We are having a little bit of difficulty integrating the dac into our system to control the speed of the motor, but with a little more research we will be able to figure it out in the next couple of days. We also outlined our final report and ordered the rest of the parts needed for our system. 

SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 4/17

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 4/17 This past week, the team continued to work on making the individual electrical components work before we combine them all together into our system. Justin was able to make the motor work completely forwards and backwards. Alan and I have been working on making the linear actuator work with an H-Bridge and relay but we are having trouble making the circuit work. Danny is coming in this week and we will hopefully be able to ask him what is wrong and how to fix it. Lastly, we divided the parts of our final report so we can start on that earlier rather than later.

SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 4/10

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 4/10 This week was our presentation #2 for ME 195b. We made significant progress this past week. Justin was able to make the motor work for a couple of seconds before we burned a 5V relay that had nearly 48V running through it. Luckily, we realized what part we needed to order to fix the problem, so we will have the motors up and running next week. We were also finally able to make two Arduinos talk to each other wirelessly after working on it for over a month. Now that we have these two tasks complete, we will be able to work on the primary code for the next month.

SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 3/27

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 3/27 This week, we received news from the full-scale motor team that the motors that we have are uni-directional and cannot break by itself. We now are adding another motor to the bogie, which means our team has to add more components into our controls system. This is also the last week we will be trying to fix the wireless communication problem. We are ordering new transceiver modules, and if those do not work, then we will not be using wireless communication in our system. Other than that, we will be working over spring break on making the motor system work and ordering the rest of the parts we need for our system. 

SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 3/20

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 3/20 This week, we continued to have issues with figuring out our I2C communication work. We built a circuit that should have one Arduino flip a switch and an LED on another Arduino should light up. We ran the program but it was not working at all the way it was supposed to be. Professor Furman came to try and help us figure out what the problem was, but there was no luck. This next week will be the last week to figure out the I2C communication until the cut the idea, and we will also be making the motor move. 

SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 3/6

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 3/6 This week, we gave our first round of presentations for the semester. The team prepared well for the presentation, and it showed in class. We really worked on making the images on our slides stand out and be more engaging to the audience by coupling them with animations. The rest of the week was spent finalizing our bill of materials and figuring out how much everything would be costing so we can start ordering our parts and assembling our controls system.