Spartan Superway ME 195a/b Senior Design Project

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.  

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 2/27 This week, we did not meet during our normal class period because my team was at a career fair. We did meet over the weekend to work on our first presentation. The controls team feels very confident with the work that has been done up to this point. We have finalized the controls system design, the system hardware list, our PCB design, and our full controls system wiring schematic. For our presentation, we really focused on improving our Assertion-Evidence style of slides and using animations to help communicate our thoughts. 

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 2/20 This week, the full-scale controls team mainly focused on trying to make two Arduino's talk to each other using I2C communication. We are still having a couple of problems with it, but we are close to figuring it out, and we will have a working prototype of a joystick on one Arduino steering a servo motor on another Arduino for our first presentation of the semester. The full-scale motor team is also getting a new motor controller which is much more usable and easier to work with, but it will take a while for it to come in. We still cannot work on controlling the motor, but we will be researching how to do it so we will be ready when the new controller comes in. 

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195b Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 2/13 This week, the full-scale controls team wanted to create an outline for what exactly is going to be used for the full-scale model, what we need to work on immediately, and what will need to be purchased. The list of materials is still being finalized, but we will have it complete by this weekend. We also learned that the motor that the motor team ordered has hall effect sensors inside, so we will be using those to track the position of the bogie on the track instead of a rotary encoder. We will still be using hall effect sensors with magnets on the actual track so that we can have a guide on when to complete other tasks during the bogies trip. The immediate tasks are to be able to have two Arduino's talk to each other and make the motor run in a controlled manner. 

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195a Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 12/5 This was our last meeting of the semester. Throughout the course of the week, we met and talked about how to divide up all of our work for the final report. We did not do much in class because there were still groups that needed to give their Presentation #3 and then everyone dispersed once those were complete. From now until December 17th, the group will be working diligently towards fixing some minor issues with our prototype program and finalizing our final report. 

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195a Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 11/28 This week, we gave our Presentation #3. To prepare for this, over spring break the team worked on our rapid prototyping models. Alan and I worked on the position tracking prototype and Justin worked on the brushless DC motor prototype. For the position prototype, we were able to connect a Hall effect sensor and a rotary encoder to talk to each other, and we programmed the prototype to print out the total distance the rotary encoder has traveled, and once the rotary encoder passes in front of the Hall effect sensor, the program prints the distance since the last Hall effect sensor. The motor prototype was working and Justin was able to control the speed of the motor with a potentiometer, but we had some technical difficulties before our presentation so we were not able to show the prototype working during our presentation. We gave a successful presentation, and for the rest of the semester we will ju...

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195a Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 11/14 This week we progressed on making our sensors and motors work. In terms of motors, Justin received his small brushless dc motor to practice on and was able to make it work and control the speed of the motor with a potentiometer. In terms of sensors, Alan and I were able to make our hall effect sensor work, an ultrasonic sensor work, and our rotary encoder to work. We tried to make the hall effect sensor talk with the rotary encoder but we couldn't make it work. Over the weekend and this following week, the team is going to meet to work on the program and delegate some tasks for thanksgiving break so that we are prepared for our last presentation.  

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195a Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 11/7 This week was difficult. Professor Furman announced to us that as of right now we have until December 31st to move out of our warehouse. We are not 100% that we are going to evicted, but we need to start planning for the worst. Other than that, the controls team met over the weekend and we were able to write programs to start making the hall effect sensors, rotary encoder, and a small brushless DC motor work. We will continue to work on these programs this week and hopefully combine them into one program that can demonstrate the controls team plan for the full-scale prototype. 

Alex Krause SJSU ME 195a Full Scale Controls Team Individual Blog - Week of 10/31 This was the week where we started moving away from the conceptual and design phase and moved towards building our rapid prototype of the controls system. We were able to connect a Hall Effect sensor provided by Dr. Furman to a breadboard to start figuring out how the sensor physically responds to magnetic fields. We also met with our coach Danny to talk about our progress with the controls system. He believes we are on the right path, but he is expecting us to do a lot more than what we are planning for, which is making the group nervous. We will be able to make the bogie move down the track safely, but there are many other features that we will like to integrate into the system down the road. In terms of the rapid prototype, we are ordering a rotary encoder to start testing with next week and hopefully by the end of next, we will have the rotary encoder and Hall Effect sensors working together to ...

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...

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 ...