Spartan Superway ME 195a/b Senior Design Project

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195a Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 9/26 The controls team made great strides on the project. The group met on Saturday and studied the existing controls system in more detail than last week, and we were able to pick out more places where improvements could be made, especially aesthetics and cable management. Justin Guro came up with a basic concept for how the motors should be hooked up to our Arduino/Pi. We are hoping to use two H-Bridges so that we can easily reverse the polarity of the motors so the carriage can easily transition from moving forwards to backwards. As per the course requirements, we created our Presentation #1, and as a result we were able to create a comprehensive gantt chart, focus our functional specification even further, and create a layout of our proposed circuit design. The group is excited that the full-scale bogie team said that there will probably be two bogies because this will give us more space to work with

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195a Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 9/12 The team is finally making meaningful strides on our project. We revised our project proposal and were able to nail down our goals for the year, which were accepted by Dan Espinosa and Professor Furman. After our meeting with Dan, we were able to take apart the controls system on the full-scale bogie and see exactly what last year's control team created. The system as a whole was messy and poorly constructed, so the group decided that another main goal was to make the control system aesthetically pleasing as well as functional. The group also got a confidence boost as the motor team decided that we would have 4 hub motors on the full-scale bogie, and that they would be sizing and building it. Originally, our team was going to be sizing the motor, but since we do not have to complete this task anymore, we are able to have more time in the beginning of the project testing on hub motors from Ron an

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195a Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 9/12 A lot of progress has been made since the first project meeting. I have been conducting research of my own on other control systems used around the world to better understand the terminology and process of controlling large transportation systems. I have also been reading through past reports to broaden my knowledge of what has already been made, what has worked, and what needs to be fixed or added. With every class, I feel more comfortable talking about the project and more comfortable interacting with other teams. The controls team was able to get together and decided that our first priority is to get any type of motor to start testing and experimenting with. While we can use the hub motor that Ron provided, I am unsure right now if it is a good test subject for us. Over the weekend, the group will be meeting to streamline the project goals and objectives and continue to focus on what needs to h

This individual post is covering the first two weeks of progress for this project. I had issues uploading blogs which is why I was unable to post last weeks, individual blog. 8/29/2018: Today's class was focused on introducing the group to the project and dividing everyone into their designated groups. First, we were given a background about the status of the project as a whole, and then we were given our assigned teams. I was assigned to the full-scale bogie team. The full-scale bogie team and full-scale guideway teams grouped together and divided into 5 sub-teams. 1. Guideway Team 2. Controls Team 3. Drivetrain 4. Bogie 5. Wayside Power I elected to be a part of the controls team. We then shared contact information with the entire team, as well as sub-teams, and discussed what needed to happen before we met the next week. 9/5/2018: In class today, each team or sub-team gave a quick 5 minutes presentation about their project scope and basic objectives for the school