Week 15 - Presentation 3 (viewings)

This week, we sat back and watched most of the Full scale team and the small scale track team present final designs and their progress thus far. It seems like everyone is on track with getting their rapid prototypes completed on time. There was a special camera guy there today getting some good-quality footage, so it looks like we'll be documenting our presentations with greater quality now.

After presentations, we all went back to our sub-teams and we ended up uploading our code to a board and attaching the set-up to the Bogie teams rapid prototype. We ended up with some good footage of the two individual projects coming together in the end.

We will be preparing for our third and last presentation that we'll be presenting next week (12/6/17).

Week 14 - Thanksgiving Break

No session this week. We all started looking into the rubric for Presentation 3, which begins next session (11/29/17)

Week 13 - Rapid Prototype Coming Together

This week we were able to use a backing plate to mount our components onto. We mounted on the Arduino Mega, breadboard, servo, and motor which we can use to demonstrate our code.

We also tried running the mobile app with the podcars and we started getting a new error for no reason. We hadn't changed anything but now the process goes on like it's supposed to until the ticket is purchased and the thread is created in Firebase. After 10-20 seconds, we'd get an error in the Command Prompt. Jeremy and I couldn't make anything of it and so Jeremy took down some notes on what was going on and took it home with him.

We got a tip from Dr. Furman for using an alternative to the UI interface for the podcar system. He recommended looking into the language called Processing, which can be used to code graphical interfaces.

Week 12 - Getting some goals accomplished

This week we were finally able to get our XBee modules communicating through serial communication. We were able to get a master module and 2 slave modules set up on our computers and experimented with how the slave modules couldn't communicate with each other and only the master module could communicate with the 2 slave modules. 

So far, we have our Arduino, Xbee, motors, servo, and RFID reader connected to a breadboard and interacting with each other. This is a good chunk of what our rapid prototype will consist of so this is good progress. 

Week 11 - Wireless Communications

In this week's meeting (11/8/17), we opened up our new XBee modules that came in, labeled them, and then proceeded to try to get them communicating with each other. The whole process with using the mobile app to purchase tickets hasn't been successful and we're not sure if it's because of faulty communications or the possibility that the podcar can't locate itself to know which station to go to. Therefore, we are trying to make sure each piece in the puzzle isworking correctly.

We were able to send basic signals between the two modules, however nothing legible. But that proved that the XBees were at least communicating during the ticket purchasing process.

We also met a new friend, Jeremy, who is a Computer Engineering student and he is volunteering to help us out with some of the mobile app material (javascript, node.js, etc.).

Week 10 - Beginning Rapid Prototyping

For this week's session (11/1/17), we began by huddling up and recapping where we're all supposed to be in terms of our progress. Then we were able to split up into our sub-teams to continue working on our project.

Some of our ordered parts came in already so we were able to begin our rapid prototyping. We were all spending time just getting our new parts set up and working. I started to assemble the breadboard set-up and began wiring the servo and the start/terminate buttons, as well as assist Coby in getting the soldering of the motor drivers done. Coby has a de-soldering tool at home so he went on to continue the progress there.

This week I will continue learning about the XBee communication with the Arduino.