Skip to main content

Team Blog #2

Team Blog #2
September 18, 2019

COMPLETED:

This week, the team came together to discuss the direction we would take regarding the small scale project. Currently, our idea for the project was to make improvements on the track that had already been built, along with refining the controls and bogie to get it all to work properly. However, after discussing with Mr. Swenson about alternate ideas that he had to the project, we debated on taking a different direction by building even smaller tracks made from laser cut material.

PROBLEMS:

There are several problems with both the options that we have discussed. Originally, the small scale track as seen in Figure 1 was created from last years small scale team. This design has many imperfections, but we already know all of them. Of course, with all those defects there must be some type of solution, but the problem with that in itself is figuring out which part to focus on first: bogie, controls, or track?


Figure 1. Small Scale Track 
Figure 2. Alternative track

Figure 2 represents the alternate idea that we had pitched to us by Mr. Swenson. By discarding the problems from the track and sticking with an alternative design for the small scale guideway, we could focus more on the bogies and controls. There has already been designs and progress for this small scale track, but the only downside is that it would be hard to realistically scale up in the future.

We approached Professor Furman about both topics, and he gave us significant advice on how we should decide on what steps to take next. 

NEXT STEPS:

we will be holding a meeting over the weekend to further discuss the final approach we will take for the Small Scale Project. Once we have decided what path to take, we will then create a Gantt Chart and presentation, begin designing ideas using CAD and other software, as well as creating a bill of materials for future reference.






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Team Blog #15

Progress for this week: Controls Team: To become more familiar with the Pixy Cam several tests were conducted throuhgout the week. After the team decided to switch over to barcodes for the stations the team saw that this method was better. A sheet of the 10 barcodes was then printed out and the team tested how accurate the pixy cam was at ientifying the different codes. The team will is now working on trying to develop a test which will incorporate the arduino along with the other electrical componenets. Figure 1: Barcode recognition by Pixy2 Guideway Team: The guideway team made progress on determining how the track will be supported and what materials we will use to build it. The team setteled on using mdf wood with a thickness of .25". The laser cutter cuts the wood accurately and precisely at the maker space, however, the space is only available during the week days from 10am to 6pm. The supporting stands will use 3ft long zinc threaded rods with nots and washers to ...

Team Blog #25

SSST Blog 5/13/20 Progress for the week: Since this is essentially the last blog for the 2019/2020 academic year, and the last major thing that was accomplished this week was submitting the report, there is not that much individual subteam work that was completed. Rather, everyone came together to work on the final report throughout the entirety of the last week. The remainder of this blog will be dedicated to showcasing the final results through images of each of the subteams and also of the Small-Scale as a whole. Controls Team  The final design of the controls team was two separate iOS apps, one allowing to connect and to send data to BLEs to activate the master Arduino code and another solely for a pleasant and informative UI experience. Although ultimately a keyboard was not able to be implemented successfully into the BLE testing app, a slider was added so that depending on its position, different 8-bit unsigned integer values (within a range specified in Xcode) can be ...

Team Blog #19

SSST Blog 3/26/2020 Progress for this week: The Small Scale team met this week to discuss our plan moving forward with our project after the recent changes that are going on. The team decided to continue meeting online via Zoom or Google Hangout to discuss our progress. The meetings will be happening every week. This week we also met as a class with Dr. Furman. We explained our plan with him and explained our schedule that is shown below in figure 1. The schedule shows the main goals of our team for the rest of the semester. Plans for next week Next week is spring break, but the team is still planning to meet to encourage ourselves to meet the deadlines that we set. For controls, the Arduino code will implement the switching mechanism servos. By adding this, the Arduino code will be complete and ready to be used along with the iOS app. The next step for the iOS app is adding a text box that allows the user to type data that can be sent to the BLE. More thing is planned to...