On 5/11/18, we gave our final presentation, which should be posted on the Small-scale Controls blog.
(Thursday 5/17/18) For Maker Faire, Ben tested the podcars at the event on Thursday, and because they had to remove one of the track supports, they just had to remove a station.
Friday, Ben and Coby went to Maker Faire.
Saturday, Coby and I went to Maker Faire and we had pods running on and off, all day. Throughout the day, the motors would slow down, and after some maintenance, they would run a bit longer before eventually seizing. After cycling through some back-up motors, we ended up with one podcar working by the end of the day. After getting back to the SSW warehouse that night, Coby and I grabbed all the old motors we could find.
On Sunday, Ben and I attended the event and initially ran the podcar that was ready to be used from the night before. After switching the other two motors, we had a couple cars running at a time for maybe an hour or so. Unfortunately soon after that, all the motors that we had began seizing and we ended up taking some motors off and letting people push the podcars around the track, while explaining what the project is about. It seemed as though a significant number of people were still interested in the project and we conversed with many, throughout the day, about what Spartan Superway aims to be.
Friday, May 25, 2018
Thursday, May 10, 2018
S2 | Week 16 - Discovery and further testing/revision/assembly
This week (5/9/18), 2 reps from Discovery came to film us all while we were working on testing our projects and preparing for Maker Faire.
Coby was working on soldering more PCBs while Ben and I were assembling the 2 remaining podcars.
After Coby finished the PCB, we tested it on the assembled podcar we had and everything worked correctly.
Now we're just preparing for our final presentation that is on Friday (5/11/18).
P.S. when trying to read messages from the serial port after the podcar had reached its destination, we'd get a weird string, which also included the message we wanted. But I haven't found a way to translate it or filter out the extra bits that are being sent. We are most likely not pursuing this Status update feature and moving forward with everything that we already have working.
Coby was working on soldering more PCBs while Ben and I were assembling the 2 remaining podcars.
After Coby finished the PCB, we tested it on the assembled podcar we had and everything worked correctly.
Now we're just preparing for our final presentation that is on Friday (5/11/18).
P.S. when trying to read messages from the serial port after the podcar had reached its destination, we'd get a weird string, which also included the message we wanted. But I haven't found a way to translate it or filter out the extra bits that are being sent. We are most likely not pursuing this Status update feature and moving forward with everything that we already have working.
Thursday, May 3, 2018
S2 | Week 15 - GUI Bug and Discovery Channel
This week (5/2/18), we found out that Discovery Channel will be coming to film the Spartan Superway project next week.
While testing, we also found a bug with our code. We observed the podcar going to the designated station when we ordered Station 12 from the GUI. However, once it stopped there, the LED would light blue again and the car would travel around the track until it reached Station 12 again.
We found out this was because the Serial port remained open after a request would be made. So basically the podcar would travel to that destination as many times as you'd press "Request Pod" on the GUI.
We simply closed the Serial port after a destination was recorded in Arduino, and opened it back up after the podcar reached its destination. This fixed our problem of Requests lingering in the Serial buffer.
While testing, we also found a bug with our code. We observed the podcar going to the designated station when we ordered Station 12 from the GUI. However, once it stopped there, the LED would light blue again and the car would travel around the track until it reached Station 12 again.
We found out this was because the Serial port remained open after a request would be made. So basically the podcar would travel to that destination as many times as you'd press "Request Pod" on the GUI.
We simply closed the Serial port after a destination was recorded in Arduino, and opened it back up after the podcar reached its destination. This fixed our problem of Requests lingering in the Serial buffer.
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