Integration 4: Driving through the Pic and Detecting Bins

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 board.

We made a makeshift crossbar (when I get back into the shop I'll fabricate a proper plexiglass one) and set the sensor board as well as the pic development board with the keypad/LCD user interface on it. This actually caused a bug, as the crossbar was alumnium it was actually shorting out some of circuitry. A quick fix was to put electrical tape along the crossbar and put the boards back in place.

After a few trials of running some of Tom's programs, including some with certain correction values if not straight on the bucket, etc. we had this run. I am very pleased with the result - we detected 6 bins and then at the point approximately 4m away, the robot started to try and turn back. This means that our encoders are working properly, and we could see that all of the sensors were operating as they should. Check it out in the video below.

http://youtu.be/t1eQQthAIcE

to do in the shop this week:

make sure the motor gears mesh PERFECTLY

test the turning functionality of the robot 

zip tie all of the wiring down neatly to prevent snags/shorts

tweak the arm