Spartan Superway ME 195a/b Senior Design Project

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...