Spartan Superway ME 195a/b Senior Design Project

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195a Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 10/24 This past week was very productive for the controls team. We nailed down our final design specifications and requirements and we came up with a solid presentation for Maker Faire. In class, we gave our presentation #2, which I felt went significantly better than our first presentation. We discussed the problems we will be solving this year, what sensors we will be using on the track, an overall description of how the system is going to be controlled by either the user of the controls team, and we explained to other teams what information we will need from them throughout the semester for our group to be successful. This weekend, the controls team will be meeting to prepare a bill of materials so that we can hopefully order sensors and small brush-less DC motors so we can start building a small prototype, create a basic outline of the final program, and get used to working with all the components tha

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195a Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 10/17 Our time in class was cut short due to the campus meeting all mechanical engineering senior project classes had to attend. During our short amount of time, we mainly tried to figure out what we needed to talk about during our presentation #2 for next week. I talked with Dr. Furman about the different aspects of the controls project and what the group should be focusing on. The following are the main aspects that the controls group will be working on for the upcoming presentation: Block Diagram  State Machine diagram Update Justin's wiring diagram System inputs & outputs motor/sensor signals voltage/current Wireless controller display speed, position, error & path Kill Switch to cut power to the whole system Switch to engage e-brake Braking and stopping if there is a short or any malfunction, turn on emergency brakes to stop and kill power to the whole system How much

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195a Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 10/10 Reality set in this week. Some of the goals the controls team were trying to meet would have been great to meet, but were mostly out of reach and would have required too much work. Considering past work and presentations at Maker Faire, we knew our main goal for the year was to make the bogie travel through the entirety of the track. With this goal in mind, we talked to the full-scale track team and we learned that the track shape was not what we thought it was going to be. At first, we thought the track was going to have a straight section and then approach a Y-intersection and the bogie would have to turn either left or right. The actual track just has one long stretch of track and has a left turn on it. For Maker Faire, the controls team's goal is to have two paths the bogie can take. It can either go the full straight distance of the track, reverse, turn left, and then return to its starting

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195a Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 10/3 The group had a great meeting with Danny, our coach for the year, during this week's class. During our talk, he went over what his group created when he was a part of the Spartan Superway Controls team, what our group should absolutely avoid during the year, and what the main problems we should try to solve are. Danny's prototype used magnets and encoders to determine where the bogie is at all times on the sample track, however it was not 100% accurate and that threatens the safety of the passengers. Our group needs to figure out a way to know exactly where the bogie is at all times during its motion, and how to determine when it is reaching a split and needs to decide whether to turn left or right. Danny also explained the importance of creating a clean and simple wiring setup. All cables need to be labeled and properly secured so that the system is easier to debug, it looks nicer to the pub