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Team Blog #6

SSST Blog 10/17/19

Progress for the week:
Controls Team 
This weeks progress was similar to last weeks. The controls team focused on two separate tasks. Lissette and Asmaa continued to develop the test code for the motor and ultrasonic sensors. The purpose of this code is to simulate what would happen if two bogies get too close to one another, in which case the ultrasonic sensors would detect this and slow down the motor of the bogie that is getting too close to the other bogie. There were some issues with the code last week, so this week kinks were continued to be worked out. A snippet of the Arduino code can be seen below in figure 1:

Figure 1: Snippet of code to control motor speed using ultrasonic sensor 

The space where the small scale team works was also searched for useful components. While Lissette and Asmaa were working on this, I (Julio) was working on the iOS app. So far I am just learning the basics of the programming language Swift by watching courses on YouTube. I have the basic layout for the app set up, however I am still learning a lot of new things and progress will be made in the following weeks to have more complete app, at least in terms of the user experience. Once the app layout is good to go, the focus will shift to being able to connect the app to the pods via a bluetooth module on the Arduino. As of right now, I picked a tabbed app style which means that the app will have multiple tabs of information in it. The three main tabs as of right now are home, search, and view map. More tabs will be added, probably reaching a total of 6 tabs (still haven't decided). The following images depict what the app looks like in this very early development stage:


Figure 2: App icon on home screen                    Figure 3: App loading screen

Figure 4: Home tab of app                                         Figure 5: Order pod tab of app

Figure 6: Map tab of pods

Guideway Team
The guideway team continued to expand on last weeks progress and planned some physical models to be ready by next Wednesday's presentation. They plan on gaining access to a 3D printer and printing the tools for clamping down their guideway design. They are also looking into printing some rails if they find a printer with a long enough heating bed. Going forward, bogie upgrades will be designed to incorporate a quick disassemble capability. A decision will also be made on whether the bogie will be all-wheel drive or two-wheel drive.  

Team As a Whole
The team as a whole made plans to meet this Saturday to work on the presentation for next week and begin working on the bogie as well. 

Plans for next week
Next week we are planning on improving from our first presentation and demonstrating the progress we have made thus far. There is also a plan for the controls team to look into purchasing a pixie cam. I will also continue working on the iOS app.

Written by:
Julio de Pereda Banda
17 October, 2019 

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