Erin is the master (of code)

We went over ALL OF THE ROBOT CODE TONIGHT, and Erin got *so* much of it (including the interrupt stuff). Congradulations, Erin!

We (most notably Shirin) figured out the glitch in our autonomous code! We had initialized the potentiometer value outside of the while (autonomous) loop. Silly us, but at least we are fairly confident that it will shoot now!

Monday Night

We mounted the sensor to a prototyped version of the gating mechanism. We also finished up the code for it. Now all that is left is testing and more testing. (And getting build to mount the sensors we have programmed for.)

Interrupts Galore

With many thanks to Doug and Eric, we finished writing the GTS code and are almost done with the code for the gating system. We had to dig into writing actual bits, but it has worked successfully :) Still to do on the above items:

-Figure out the mounting of the GTS. It needs to be REALLY close to the gears, but hopefully we can do it. 'Twould be a shame to do all that coding and then not be able to mount it properly.
-Find out how many teeth/revolution and the circumference of the wheel. Easily done, just one more thing on the list.
-Deal with turning using the GTS. This could be an issue...

-Finish writing the motor code for the gating system
-Decide on speed for gate motor that will be efficient yet not kill our touch sensor.
-Figure out mounting of gating system and of touch sensor to motor. This should be another task for build.


Followed by:
LOTS of testing and debugging! (and modifying controls to driver preferences)

Today

I think the best plan for today is to work on the gating system. Let's recruit someone from build to help us mock something up and then see if we can get it opening and closing on the command of a joystick button.

Tomorrow, Doug will be back and he will help us on the GTS. We have hooked it up to the correct cables and figured out that if we mount it facing the main plane of the gear it will send out a signal. Saturday holds the wonder of interupt code...

naming

the turret has officially been named
(*drumroll please*)




CHESTER


woot!

next up,
robot name
..and gear tooth sensors.... gack!

A Driving Robot!!!

The robot now drives under joystick control! We debugged the algorythm we wrote last night and now we have more control at low speeds and a deadband that can be easily adjusted to the driver's preference.

Speed Controllers WORKING!

All of them! Thank heavens for George and Sanjay and a combined six degrees in electrical engineering to solve this silly problem.

http://www.ifirobotics.com/docs/ifi-v884-users-manual-1-26-05.pdf

Sanjay, Shirin's father, found a little note in the data sheet that the speed controllers need to be calibrated. Also, one of the cables was questionable.

Things are better. Now we can sort of move forward with the project.

Em