Spartan Superway ME 195a/b Senior Design Project

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.