The final blog post

We have come along way and we hope that everyone enjoys our project.

These pictures were just us on the expo early. We wanted to get a good spot and assemble our project in time for the expo.

Here is a video! We managed to get it to move straight, but we still have to give it a little push. If we tried to increase the duty cycle to high we end up blowing a fuse. We are still pretty proud of it.

Here is a picture of the entire project finished. 

That's us! Sadly one of our group member could not make it to the meeting.

Regarding the end of the project, we believe we did fairly well. We took a lot of the concepts we learned in the class and tried to integrate them in the project. If we had managed our time a little more we might have been able to integrate the joystick and maybe some steering mechanism. We were also looking at changing out the gears. I think the main reason we can't get the chair to move with someone heavy on it is because our gear ratio's could have been better. However, what we found at the hardware store was the best combination we could find. Other than that, we also wished we had a made better decision about what to do for a laser cutting and 3d printing. We really wanted to incorporated something that could hold the joystick in place and protect it. Now looking back, I think we would of also incorporated the UML logo. We ended up just using a laser cut cardboard box, but it was way to big. Regardless if what we didn't do, we will learn from those mistakes and incorporate the process in future classes. 

A slight problem, but also a bright side (Well, technically a dark side)

This is the set up we have. Starting from the top of picture we have the motor control module that came from the treadmill. Right below the bread board, is the power supply that we also took from the treadmill. As of right now, we are having difficulties integrating the joystick with the control module. Also, notice that we are using the older control module. The one that the group purchased could only take about 12 volts and it might have just been poor judgement on our part, but the new control module is no longer with us. However, the old one seems to work fine so we are OK with that. We will try our best to get it working.

But on the bright (dark) side, we painted the wooden frame and the chair. It looks a lot neater then it did before. Now we just have to do some testing tonight and hopefully have something for tomorrows expo. 

Set lasers to cut...a box

About a week ago, we posted some pictures of possible Solidworks designs for a box that could hold an Arduino and a joystick. Well, I had completely forgotten about those parts that I made and never uploaded them to Google Drive. I did attempt to go a computer lab and tried to make new ones, but due to time constraints I had make solid models and hope that we could just glue them together. However, Professor Sullivan was gracious enough to allow us to use a box that he already had spec'ed out. Without losing time he helped us cut out what we needed. The box was a little too tall to allow the joystick to stick out and have some movement, but we should be able to figure something out to adjust height. 

Coding is good for you

int PWM_OUT = 9;

float duty = 0.0;

int onTime;

void setup()

{

  pinMode(PWM_OUT, OUTPUT);

  pinMode(13, OUTPUT);

}

 

void loop()

{

  onTime = floor(duty*50);

  digitalWrite(PWM_OUT, HIGH);

  digitalWrite(13, HIGH);

  delay(onTime);

  digitalWrite(PWM_OUT,LOW);

  digitalWrite(13, LOW);

  delay(50-onTime);

}​

*********************************************************************************

This code was written so that we could control the speed of the motor instead only disconnecting it and reconnecting it. I would also like to point out in the code is that a PWM had to be used in order for it to work properly. PWM stands for Pulse Width Modulation. This is how we control the motor itself. By varying the proportion of the duty cycle, it tells the motor how fast to spin and when to spin that fast. We are hoping that this could will help us when we trying to integrate the joystick into the project. 

Solidworks for days

Bottom Section

Side Section

Top section with a circle cut out for the joystick

So these Solidworks files were originally going to be for the box that would hold the Arduino and the joystick. Obviously this setup would just be a temporary part, but this allows the person to get an idea of what a finished product could look like if someone were to bring this project from start to finish.  These Solidworks files were never truly finished. They don't have the proper mates and the puzzle pattern on the outside to fully mesh a rectangular box together. We will continue to work on them until we have something.