March 3nd, 2004: Lab Day 6 Semester 2

Where: Jobst 248

What got done:

Today in lab we got a handle on where we need to go from here. Discussing the problems I've been having with the H bridge design with our advisor we have come to the conclusion that it would be better to purchase a commercial H bridge to drive the motors. The reason we did not do this from the start was that we were originally working with 3V motors and a 3V power rail. There are no commercial H bridges that work at that low of voltage. However, we are now working with a 6V rail. There are a few ICs made by TI that work at 5V. This should work just fine for our circuit. Thus we have put in an order for them. On the software front we have the A/D interfaced and working properly for the most part. There is still some concern as to whether or not the A/D would recover from a complete power loss but it currently is a minor issue that we will continue to look into.

What needs doing:

There is a a lot we need to do. We need to finish up the main software for all of the behavioral modes and control routines. We also need to come up with an IR communication scheme and write software to handle it. We also need to get some IR components and interface everything together. It will be a hard couple of weeks.