Gomathy Weekly Reports - GomathyVenkat/411Practicum GitHub Wiki

Week 1:

  • Came up with two ideas for practicum : Fire and heat sensing aid for accident protection and line sensor robot.
  • Discussed it with group members.
  • Looked up git, wiki options

Week 2:

  • Made a list of preliminary criteria based on which project needs to be chosen.
  • Came up with a few more ideas: hand gesture controlled robot.
  • Worked on block diagram of the hand gesture controlled robot and listed purpose of the project. This initial prototype used two MCU's : Atmel(Tx) and PIC(Rx)
  • Research on what controls we wanted the robot to have and started searching for parts.
  • Set up github for project and code documentation

Week 3:

  • After the hand gesture controlled robot was finalized as project, made a preliminary schematic of Rx and Tx side of the project.
  • Tx side had an atmel and Rx side had a PIC: Made a decision of what programmer will be used to code the device
  • Made a list of materials that were required for primary testing
  • Started a BOM and tasks to be accomplished google docs to facilitate better communication between group members
  • Assigned roles to all the group members

Week 4:

  • Found simple methods to test sections of the prototype on the breadboard
  • Assisted in schematic design and worked on the insertion on the ICSP header and USB(in progress)
  • Evaluated the voltage requirements for robot chassis, servo motors and power supply for Rx and Tx board.
  • Assigned roles to group members to decide component choices

Week 5:

  • Decided to use only one micro controller on the transmitter side to reduce the need to have microcontrollers on both the boards
  • Found a coding mechanism using programmer via ICSP or ISP or USB
  • Researched about possibility of using a JTAG emulator : not needed
  • With Arduino as ISP programmed an standalone atmel chip by loading the bootloader and the program

Week 6:

  • Found a quick test mechanism to burn bootloader code into the atmel chip via ICSP
  • Weighing out possibility of using ICSP or USB for programming the chip
  • Came up with preliminary code for forward, backward, left and right movements of the robot using four states (4 input combination)
  • Tested the encoder decoder pair using a breadboard prototype

Week 7:

  • Arrange all the components ordered as per side(receiver or transmitter) and organize components
  • Finalize the PCB layout and print the board in EPL for prototype testing after rule check is done
  • Printed the Rx and Tx board in the EPL
  • soldered all the components onto the EPL prototype board and debugged it. Did the power and continuity test
  • loaded the code onto the MCU's, built a chassis and started working on the code
  • developed the stability loop after noticing some delays and cut a trace on the prototype board to improve the prototype

Week 8:

  • Optimized design made on the prototype to make a better final design
  • Assisted in the schematic diagram and layout of the final design with OSH Park dru and cam
  • worked on code on the prototype

Week 9:

  • Soldered the surface mount components on the PCB
  • Did the power test and the continuity test and started documenting the test plans and final report
  • Made a list of components required that were still missing

Week 10:

  • Discrepancies noticed on the PCB design therefore had to work on the code to make the Rx and Tx communicate with each other
  • Coded the Atmel chip with more delays and with a better stability loop so that the boards can communicate with each other
  • Testing and refactored code every time to optmize the system
  • Documented the code and design information of the practicum project