DavidMapapa

During week 7, our focus was on pod car communication. We wanted to talk about the different ways the pod car could communicate between each other and communicate position back to the our tablet. We discuss about having either an encoder or a GPS system. The GPS system was appealing, but a problem was that it was not scalable. Professor Furman pointed out that the signal connection might not be good with the gps system. Therefore, with are did more research on it. The other option was using an motor encoder to keep track of position and go from there. We realized if we knew the position of each pod car, it would improve our capacity of avoiding collisions.

Today the 1/12 scale control team improved on the design specifications of the projects. The goal today was to select, specific brushless motors to be used for actuation. The selected motor was brushless Motor 2208 80KV for 2-axis BGC camera Gimbal at 7.99$ apiece. We also started the bill of material for the control team. On top of that we talked to the track on the design and path of the track and about the exact location of the charging station. We went over the inductive charging method and how long we wanted a pod car to charge before leaving the charging station and going back to the normal path. Finally, we tried to go online and look for the best charging method for the inductive charger and how to amplify the charging current so that we can charge our pod cars faster and have all the cars up running in no time. This Wednesday session was a collaborative session with other teams and we will use the week to do more research on the design specifications and start writing code. 

During week 5, each Spartan Superway group had 10 min to present on the different improvement they had made on their design, their design specification, the challenges they'll be facing and gantt chart of the project. The full scale, half scale and small scale all presented during the period of the time. The small scale control team had their presentation as well and we presented on: 1. We presented on what Spartan Superway meant, what the project aimed to accomplish. 2. Then we talked about last year team and all the hard work they had done. 3. We introduced our first implementation idea, which was the wireless charging method with the intent to replace the LiPo batteries with NiMH 7.2V batteries. 4. Secondly we presented the 1000KV brushless motor that we were planning on using instead of the brushed motor. Considering the fact that the battery were 7.2V total, and that a 1000KV=1000rpm/V the brushless motor would run at 7200rpm/V. 5. The expected speed of a pod car was dete

On week 4 of Spartan Superway, we had to meet up with the small scale control team coach Colin. He was of great help, because he walked us through every single detail we had to know. He throughly  explained why they chose Python to build their GUI and how they used the Raspberry Pi to set up the android tablet. Colin pointed out that they had to learn Python on their own the same year. Which was helpful and encouraging because I do not have much knowledge in the language. He proceeded to talk about the improvement he thought had to be made from last year design. He explained that during Maker Faire last year they had run the brushed motor for three days straight and most of them would get damaged by it. Therefore he proposed that we should perhaps select different motors to display at the fair, which we decided to be brushless motors. He pointed out that the hardest thing would be to find gearing to slow down the speed of the motors, because brushless motor tend to rotate faster.

During the third week of Spartan Superway, we had time to get familiar with the small scale team in general and  what everyone else was doing. Since our coach was not there at the moment, we got to talk to Kevin Brazil, coach of the small scale track. He explained what they had done last year. He walked the whole small scale team through the small track task of the project. While doing so, he gave us information on the previous small scale control team as much as he recalled. Kevin walked us through the GUI app on the android tablet. He was not familiar with the code, but showed us how to navigate through the tablet itself. He explained that the podcast were connected via  Xbee Radio Frequency, he explained that the Xbee system worked such way that they were a master Xbee in a pod car and slaves in others. Lastly, Kevin roughly walked us through the process of applying for funds and make a proposal. He laid out the time frames they followed the complete their project the previous y

During the second week, the small scale control teams had the opportunity to present on what they'll be improving during the both semester. Those improvements where listed during the presentation and they're listed down as: 1.  Add a differential drive on the wheel to avoid over-usage of the servo and the wheels  2. Add an inductive charging to wirelessly charge the pod car    3. Improve the Python Graphical User Interface and add some features to the software to make the interface easier 4. Improve the censoring system of the pod car in order to avoid collision during turns.