Project Log
January 27nd, 2004: Lab Day 1 Semester 2
Where: Jobst 248
What got done:
Lab was very productive. The first order of business was that our microcontroller had arrived. It was as pretty as it looked in the pictures. I hope it works as nicely. We couldn't do too much with it because we need software installed on our lab computer and to do that we need administrative approval. So we got approval and now we are waiting for someone to actually come and install it. Hopefully it will be up and running by the end of this week. As far as the motor selection goes I have reviewed my selections and acquired product numbers and contact info with which to order them with. The reason this is so important is that we need to base the power regulation on the needs of the motors and other circuitry. So we need to know what power we need in order to buy solar cells. It looks as if we are going to use a 3V main supply to power the motors and the rest of the electronics. Ajax has compiled a list of possible solar cell vendors with associated prices and volume required to power the bug based on our previous calculations.
What needs doing:
We need to get stuff ordered. Solar panels, motors, gears, encoders, etc. Once that is done we will need to simulate the motor controls in pspice and test them in practice. The finial spice models have been made but they await more testing. We also need to get the microcontroller software installed so that we can get at the documentation. They have manuals on the cd they sent us but they are all wrapped up in the installer. Thus we can't get at them until the software is installed. So the theory is while we wait for parts we can get on writing some code and developing the rest of our optoelectronics.