March 2012 Blog Posts (6)

Next week is the second team eval! I can't believe it is this close.

Today was focussed on working together to get the machine ready for a full run. Wiring was secured in place with electrical tape in order to ensure that it was neat and out of the way of actuating motors, a plexiglass mount was made for the PIC board, the arm was reattached and the right gear was re-epoxyed onto the motor. Also, the problem we were having with the rear-right wheel not touching the ground…

Following the integration and test runs that our group conducted today (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1eQQthAIcE&feature=player_embedded), I brought the robot home and fixed some bugs in the circuit and the code. In my final test run, the robot was able to detect all 7 garbage bins, identify their colours, and store their locations. Some pictures of the final UI were taken and have been uploaded into…

Today was the EngSci open house day, and as we were volunteering to talk about AER201 in the common room we were also able to get a lot accomplished.

Though the wiring had been finished before hand, each wire needed to be tinned and then soldered into its respective spot. Once everything was connected and soldered in place by Mason, and each sensor's connectivity was tested and deemed successful, we loaded Tom's program onto the pic and connected his development board to the sensor…

Yesterday the main goal of the lab session was to finish mounting all of the sensors, wire them up, and get ready to connect everything together. Mason and Tom were finishing up the sensor circuit board and the pic board respectively, and I took the time to mount the IR range sensors to the base and break beam sensors to the upper section of the arm. I also ran wire through the base from the sensor to the approximate spot where the sensor board will be mounted on our robot. I'll have to get…

Today I asked Prof. Emami for the circuit diagram of the RTC module. I was then able to make that circuit and integrate it with the PIC Board and my LCD. For those who would like to make their own RTC module, I have uploaded the circuit diagram in my photo section. Be sure to check it out because it really saves you a lot of time.

Below is a video of the working circuit on protoboard:…

Last week, two programmers Kevin Tan and I worked on the circuits for keypad and LCD. As our groups both use the PIC boards to save money for our circuit and electromech members, we designed and assembled the two circuits and connected them to the PIC. They only require some capacitors, resistors, wires and two IC's. Below is a link to a video documenting the results of our work.

http://youtu.be/eSjynyepa6g