Day 13: In which we work in the field

Here is our finished robot. His name is Rollo. Today we worked mostly in the field trying to get our functions to conform to what we needed. It would be an understatement to say that some work was put in over the weekend. A LOT of work was put in over the last weekend and previous days to get us to where we are now. Tomorrow we have a work day, which you can see the fruits of our labor down below.

Day 12: In which we code and play with the sonar

For most of today, I coded and Sarah was still working on our line sensor. However, near the end of class we got the sonar which we were able to get ready to mess around with the next day. The sonar worked perfectly. It was very accurate and simple to use. As for coding, I worked on it diligently. Having not coded in C, I think I did very well. I think the main thing is having basic computer science logic knowledge. That is the most important part.

Day 11: In which boredom overcame as we attempted to solve problems

Frustration overcame us as we continued working on coding. This is all that we saw. The firmware for the arduino wasn't working and we didn't know why. It would get to 98% then stop. We finally figured out that the arduino was dead. We don't know how, but it was. We tried to use Sarah's Arduino (which had already been pronounced dead) and it worked. I find it necessary to only bring up one picture because this is all we saw for the whole class period. There was nothing else to show. Very frustrating..

Day 9: In which we make sensors for the bot

Today we made some sensors. I worked on making the 2 flame sensors while Sarah worked on the line sensor. We later found that putting the the phototransistor in backwards would give us a better range of readings.

This is the line sensor that Sarah made. We had many, many problems with this once we decided that the leads needed to be longer. We needed to extend the wires so it would reach the board, but we kept getting dead wires because the wires were very small. We pretty much took the whole thing apart and did it over again.

Day 10: In Which we build out Vexduino

Today I soldered out vexduino while Sarah checked out our square bot and made sure all the bolts were tight and things were looking good. Sarah also put encoders on the bot so we could count the number of ticks and figure out how far we are moving. Unfortunately for us, we had a lot of problems making the Vexduino work. It was very, very frustrating. That being said, this was the only thing we did the whole class.

Day 8: In which we revive the square bot

Today we took out the square bots that we made and worked on driving it under a microcontroller. Since Sarah and I both have macs, we had to use the desktop in the classroom, which was sort of an inconvenience, but we made it work. We also put encoders on out bot and learned to drive the bot using Robotc. It was a fairly exciting day in my opinion. I have never coded in C but I found it really easy compared to Java.

Day 7: In which I continue to work on Frankenbear

This blog is supposed to be about my progress through electronics. So, I take a picture of my computer screen because this is what class consisted of for me: lots and lots of coding. Some of this I did over the weekend.. Okay, a lot of this I did over the weekend, but I found plenty of problems when I plugged everything in and tried to get it all working.

When I was at my house, I used LEDs just to keep it simple. So when I had a port that would drive the motor, I just put an LED to show when the motor would be on. When I got to class, my motor wasn't working. Of course it wasn't!! I forgot that I needed my darlington capacitor to drive my motor. But.. it still wasn't working. A 9v battery would drive it for a bit but it just wasn't cutting it. With the help of John Davis and Prof. Mason, we figured that my motor just needed to overcome static friction, then it would run alright. to do this, we put a large capacitor before my power supply(I had to trade a friend for his power supply with a higher current of 1A instead of my .7A). This setup FINALLY did what it was supposed to do. After I figured out the motor situation, the rest had been done at home. I plugged the rest of it in and tried it out.

After class, I went home and continued working. HOURS passed and I was still working. Finally, at around 2am, I had finally (almost) completed him. There was lots of debugging to do, and I am very proud to say that I was able to do much of it by myself. Please see my Frankenbear project blog for more information.

Day 6: In which I learn to drive higher loads with a microcontroller

This Christmas light is much larger than an LED and requires more current than the microcontroller and the wall plug is able to provide. We used a capacitor to make the current larger. This was able to drive the Christmas light and make it bright.

This uses two capacitors to make what is called a Darlington. This uses two capacitors to amplify the current twice. In this setup, we also used a diode so that if there was a motor instead of the Christmas light, there would be no back EMF to hurt the components on the board.

The final part of the packet was to finally drive our motor. Now that I understood how to drive higher loads other than an LED, I can get to finishing my project. The only problem that I am finding is that the motor is very slow. I will have to figure out another way to do that later. For now, I want to focus on the programming side of things.

Day 5: In which I learn more about microcontrollers and kill the bear

After learning the basics of the Arduino, we moved on to using a button as an input. We wrote a code to say that if the button was pressed, it would turn the LED on. and if it was not pressed, it would be off. You may be able to see in the picture that I broke part of the wire on the right side of the ground, rendering it unusable.

This is my bear. I haven't decided his name yet, but iI am deciding between Sexy Sax bear and Frankenbear. I got him at the Goodwill by my house for $8. He sings Christmas songs and dances along with tapping his feet.

I hacked away at my bear and got into his body. I took out the board that all the wires were attached to and cut it off. I then had a very difficult time putting him back together. Because he only has one motor, there are mechanical pieces inside that I was unable to get back together completely. Because of this, I wasn't able to get his feet to move like they used to.

Day 4: In which I complete the square bot and move onto transistors and micro controllers

This is my completed square bot. I have built square bots before so this wasn't too difficult. I was one of the few to have enough (and even a surplus of collars). Although I had completed this project before, there were still valuable lessons to be learned from this, like learning how to follow instructions.

This is a video of my breadboard setup with with the transistor. This is a substitute for the relays. The difference is that they are more reliable and because it is all electronic and not mechanical.

The final thing we did is deal with micro controllers. We made lights blink and then we made 4 lights blink in succession. We did this by downloading the Arduino program and writing the program in a program like C. I am excited to continue to with the micro controllers and see what else we can do with it.

Day 3: In which I learn to use various electronic components on a breadboard.

 This is my setup on a breadboard to use switches to turn an LED light on and off. This was built off a schematic. Two lessons learned here: how to use a switch, and how to read off a schematic.

 In this setup, I used a relay and a push button to . This was also read off of a schematic. I am really enjoying the fact that we are getting into things that I can see working in the world around me.

This setup uses a push button, a relay, and a capacitor to make two LED lights blink link a turn signal in a car. Of course, our lights went much quicker because we had very small capacitors. This setup was difficult for me because my we discovered that my relay may have a higher voltage to set it off than other ones and the 9V battery that was doing the job just 15 minutes prior was not getting past the threshold anymore.

Day 2: In which I learn about the Multimeter and use it in the study of electronics

 Before today I had never used a Multimeter. To my delight it was very easy to use and was very useful as well. We used the tool to measure the voltage for different electronics and to measure resistors.

After we practiced different ways to use the tool, we found yet another way. This time we took a light sensor and we found the maximum and minimum resistance we could make using a flashlight and putting it in the dark.

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We also used the breadboards again to test what happens when you use different resistors. I found that the higher rated resistors made the LED light dimmer. Above, from left to right are the 100, 1000, and 10000 ohm resistors. And accordingly, you can see the light going from light to dim. After this, we used the potentiometer to put the LED light on a 'dimmer switch'. Unfortunately, I failed to take a picture of this. It was pretty cool if I do say so myself.

Day 1: In which I build and test a 5v power supply

 The first project we had was to solder 10 different components onto a practice board. Since this was my first time ever soldering it was somewhat scary but after doing two or three I got the hang of it and it was rather fun. The picture above is the bottom side of my finished board.

 Above is a picture of the top side of my circuit board. Keep in mind that the components on the board are randomly placed and are in no particular spots.

After learning to solder,  we learned how to strip wires and make but joints. This would prove important for making our power supply. We also covered each joint with heat shrink wrapping to protect it.

Speaking of which, here is my Samsung 5v power supply. The two prongs are very close together and we're very difficult to solder to the other two wires.

After testing the power supply we learned about breadboards and resisters.  We used our breadboard to light up an LED light shown above.