Update: Project ALF

Alright, well the demo came and past. Late in the night both Dan and I got the robot's main board debugged. Its great when you realize that a voltage regulator is in backwards. Then decide its too much work to fix it and just rip it out and call it a night... But that's what we did. The H-bridge really doesn't need to be regulated because it can handle voltages from 4-55V ... or WAY more then some voltage spike is going to be able to produce.

I thought for an end of term wrap up it would be nice to see what is done. Below is the "finished" robot, that has secured us a pass in the course if we do nothing else.

The Pimpmobile, complete with low profile yellow rims.

LED...Check
Clear Plastic...Check
Sweet Black tape...Check

I've done more than my fair share thus far. The Robot is my design, the PCB I designed, the Pic is all my code. The only thing that the others have done was solder it together (I did help though), and have some "Research" done. ...Pisses me off. What we have done at this point is a robotic car, that runs on batteries and can be programmed with pre-programmed routines (I put in Straight, Left, Right, ZigZag, attempted circle).

What needs to be done at this point is:
-Get the thing running at 40Mhz (Its at like 2 or 4 right now)
-Get the PWM working on both motors (Stops jerky motion)
-Get IR Leds running
-Get Wheel Encoder Data

The above stuff shouldn't be too hard, most of the legwork is done already, just needs to be hacked together better.

From January on we need to:
-Capture that Wheel Data and interpret it nicely. (Wirelessly)
-Need to get the Pic thinking on its own, not just "do what I say" mode
-Wireless communication
-Most importantly: This SOB needs a Friggin Body on it!! I'm going to make up a sweet bodykit for it.

All of this will be of course done in our super high tech lab:

That window just reminds us how much time we spend inside.

...aka my old basement.

Thats it for the update, it works thus far! That makes me happy. But were not done yet.

Crunch Time.

Well, we have one week today.

One week to get this robot together, and running. Shiiiite!! So far what has happened is we had to redesign the board twice, because the datasheet VDD doesnt match the board VDD we are using. So the uC wouldnt run because it didnt have the power to do so.

We also removed ALL of my pretty motor control =(... Basically my "original" solution to speed and direction control is not only the oldest method. It happens to be the absolute WORST one concievable. So a new strategy has be planned for that. PWM... a lot more uC intensive but, its the most efficient and made our boardsize from by a factor of like 33%.

So.. what do we have to show for right now? One Slow-ass robot (Measured in at its "fast" setting at 0.6Mph ....yeah. 1km/h Not at all speedy, I have to look into this because, its "robot" fast. Not Fast at all. I want one that's at least capable of walking speed. Its not too hard to get there either, it will just require some interesting implementation and batteries. (Might Borrow Some RC car ones)

We have a pretty schematic, a half retarded robot, and 1 week to fix EVERYTHING, with only 2/4 people competent and one of those already doing everything.

This is my board, 100% designed and built by myself... with input from other people of course

This was another one of those "Man good thing I caught this error before I made the board" That chip there is supposed to run between 3.0 and 3.6V max ... yet ran best at 5V. ...I Know why now, but I didn't expect that to happen. Thats for sure

To finish up, our group is in DEEP. I mean, I have one week to not only finish assemble and test my circuit board to make sure it works, but I need to program, debug and test my code to run on the damn thing!
Compare this to the list that the rest of the group is going to have done by then:
-Fuckall.

...This makes me angry and sad. I know next term I'm going slow and everyone else can work their collective asses off.

Some bumps along the road

Well, we are getting somewhere on this project. As you can see, we assembled the body of the robot (really complicated eh? 1 sheet of polycarbonate and a few motors glued on...)

Oohhh look how technical it looks! 2 screws a battery pack and some wheels....

Anyways, we are having some extreme difficulty with not only two of the people in our group, but silly things that I've been doing -like not fully reading datasheets- has kinda screwed a few (read: lot) up.

For starters, I promised I could control the speed and direction of 2 DC motors with only 4 pins. Not impossible. A little challenging. I was planning on 2 analog out pins, where we would set a 16-bit number and would have 2^16 (65536) different speeds to choose from. This is a real no-no. Why? because there is no such thing as an analog output on a PIC. Shit.

So what I have to look into now is a way of controlling speed with 2 digital pins (4 possible outputs) and direction with the other 2. So, how am I going to get >4 speeds out of only 2 pins you ask? My answer is: creatively.

This is what I got so far. I'm looking into finding a 1-2 decoder, connected to a pair of 4 bit shift registers, each of which is then also connected to a 4-bit D/A Converter. This will give use 16 levels of resolution for our motors. Seeing as I can't drop below 4V anyways, this should be more then enough variation to make it all work. Problem is that the Shift registers need to be clocked in. And I already need 2 pins for Decoder Select and output Bits.

Whats a Guy to do? Never catches a break.

Not to mention the one guy in our group bickering bout how hard his part is -which I've friggin babied him through.- Damn it! he's somehow written 100+ lines of code for something that isnt terribly difficult. Edge Detection Man, F---in edge detection. Thats all.

So, this mother's got to be completed in 10 days. ....Yup, 10. Built, tested, running. You see a circuit board on that thing anywhere? Nope that has to be made still. I got most of it done, but It got the "No redeeming qualities" check from a friend. (Story of my life =( .... )

Thats enough for now.

Back to work for you!

My Sensors!!

They arrived today! Lil' suckers.

They look like they will work better then predicted. I mean, they have 8 sensors in a strip 3/8"s apart.

The project is hopefully going to speed up now. Parts ordered. Schematics can start being laid out. Testing can then occur, and before you know it. BAM! its done. ....hopefully.

This guy. 3 inches long. Took 15 days to get from montreal to hamilton. Something that Canada post agrees should take 2 max.

----
Reflections:
Well what else is new here?
I still can't believe its my last year of schooling. I mean, it wont really strike me until the end.

I don't know what I'm going to do. What should I be doing? Get a job right away? Try for more schooling? I think- just like highschool- the saddest thing won't be leaving school. It will be leaving the friends you've made. The difference this time being you will most definitely wont see them again unless you are really close. Which sadly is true for only one or 2 people around here. If I could I would love to stick around another victory lap year and hang out with people as much as I can, however thats a costly thing to do, and not really all that feasible.

Frig, I'd love to have a solid direction in my life right now. Something that says "go this way, its clearly the best"

Thats enough reflection for one entry.
--
DK

Where are my sensors?

Seriously, 5 business day shipping. Its been over 10 and they are still sitting in Mississauga!

This is totally out of left field but I really like this kind of work. Setting up parts ordering. Getting things that need to be done by a deadline, done by said deadline. Interacting with people. I'm actually thinking that I might like a project manager position in the future. As much as I'd like to sit in a lab and invent something or code something brilliant. I might be more useful in this kind of role.

Well, midterm tomorrow. Can't keep procrastinating. I'll be in deep trouble. Well, I already am.
I don't understand how someone can enjoy this course. The professor is literally just writing out of the book. The book isn't that useful. The Teaching assistants are helpful but hard to understand. Then the course material is about as exciting as standing in a line for a flu shot.

More updates to come.

Project Proposal

Well, our group just finished our proposal to our 8:30am class.

...all 15 people looked too sleepy to care.

The good thing was that the 2 other groups that we saw run through were all aiming way too high for this thing, promising balanced gyroscopic stuff that will fly. Or something that will run off an FPGA with a camera because infrared sensors are just too simplistic.

None of these guys have really looked into how much such projects are going to cost. Answer: Alot of money.

I mean, even for ours with my thriftiness at its finest. Our project will still be 300$ by the end of it. Thats robot, sensors, IC's, Microcontrollers, and all other misc. materials.

Our presentation went well, except I apparently answered "too many" questions according to my groupmates and made them look kinda bad. Whatever...

Looking into the future we need to get the rest of our parts, otherwise we might be in some hot water come December. Off to the left here is all the parts we have as of now. Wheels, motors, wheel encoders, and the Pic. We totally have enough to start working on some stuff in the lab. This week we will be looking at getting most of the IC stuff so I can start EAGLE and making up our uber PCB

Fun times ahead! More stuff to come.

Hello, World

Welcome.

I'm trying this serive out and migrating out of an older pretty much obsolete blogging service. This one seems to be superior in terms of customization. With no tackiness.

We'll see how often I can actually write anything here. I guess as far as introductions are concerned. I'm currently a final year electrical engineering student who has an affinity for anything mechanical. Think I chose the wrong major? Yeah probably; but this gives me a head up on any job that needs some sort of mechanical aptitude.

Job wise, I like to get dirty. Coming home not covered in dirt and sweat is not a day at work! That being said; one day I hope to have a shop that I can work out of on the side. Create things.

Hopefully more information to follow! I'm planning on posting how we build this final year design project of ours. Somehow I am now project leader. Which, is good in a way. Everything shall be done to MY standards. Which are apparently higher then 1/2 of the group. and equal to the other half.

Take care.
--
DK