Jack's Blog for Spartan Superway

During the first part of our meeting, Dr. Furman brought us into the main room for the rest of the sub-teams to present their first presentation #1 to the rest of the teams and get feedback from Ron, Eric and Dr. Furman. For our first presentation, we discussed our final design to all the sub-teams. We explained how we were going to integrate a BLDC-108 motor, a KEB48201X motor controller, a dual axis joystick module, 2 NRF24L01 RF transreceivers, a kill switch, an HC-SR04, and an encoder. With our final design, we also discussed on how we could extend the longevity of our controls system. Therefore, we discussed about making a case for our wireless controller so that the wires and the hardware is not to get messed up by when other users are to use them. We also discussed in our presentation about how we wanted to have a PCB to have our controller and other components organized to place onto the pod car system. We brought up the idea of using ABS plastic shell case for our motherboard

When we met at the Spartan Superway workshop, Dr. Furman gathered everyone into the main room and had sub teams present their presentation #1. We were able to listen to everyone's presentation and learn what direction they plan on taking in order to have their project ready by Maker Faire. For example, the Full Scale Solar team discussed how they were planning on making design changes. Additionally, the Small Scale Controls team discussed about using a new GUI to interface with their project. Our team, and the rest of the sub-teams are expected to present next week.

For this week's meeting, we were to meet up in the ENGR 189 lecture hall with the rest of our peers for a presentation lectured by Dr. Furman. Dr. Furman explained to the ME 195B students about the essence of Assertion-Evidence method in presentation. He explained this method was important because it effectively gets the presenter's ideas across by using minimal words in slides. After Dr. Furman finished his presentation, we were to meet at the Spartan Superway workshop and meet with our respective sub-teams. At the workshop, Cheuk and I discussed about whether we should implement other components into our controls system design to enhance user functionality.

For this week's meeting, a guest speaker came into the Spartan Superway workshop and talked to us about automated transit networks (ATNs) in Sweden. After the presentation and announcements were over, we broke up into our sub-teams. During the rest of our meeting, Cheuk and I discussed about when and how we should go about buying the parts. Furthermore, we discussed about what material would be best in building our shell case for our wireless controller. We also drawn schematics of the wiring diagram for our controls system using fritz.

As we met up at the Spartan Superway workshop, the subteams presented their lightening talk to get the overall process of each Full, Half and Small Scale teams and the direction they were planning to take in order to get ready for Maker Faire. For our lightening talk, we talked about what our next steps were in proceeding with implementing our final design. We talked about how we were going to use a BLDC-108 motor and a KEB48201X motor controller for our controls system. Additionally, we talked about how we were going to organize our system by using zip ties and printed circuit boards. Lastly we explained to the rest of the teams that we plan on creating a case for our wireless controller. Posted below is our lightning talk presentation.

In our first week of the spring semester, we met at the Spartan Superway workshop. For our first meeting, Dr. Furman explained how we would be have a lightening talk presentation the following about our current progress in implementing our final design. From the previous semester, Cheuk and I decided on integrating a ultrasonic sensor, a kill switch, and an wireless joystick. After getting feedback from Dr. Furman and Eric, we have decided to create a separate mechanism for the kill switch instead of having it on the joystick. Additionally, we have decided to buy a case for the wireless joystick. This idea is beneficial because it will allow the wires to be protected from being pulled out. Now that we were able to develop a successful rapid prototype, our task was to find the full scale parts online at an affordable price.