2019/2020 SpartanSuperway Small Scale Team

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 ...

SSST Blog 5/6/20 Progress for the week: This week the SSST completed the Final Presentation that listed and explained the final design, analysis, and conclusions of each sub-team. Beforehand, many of the objectives that were set forth at the beginning of the year were completed this week. In the following sections, the overall progress for the guideway, bogie, and controls team will be mentioned. Guideway Team The team was able to render a solid model of the overall completed track using Fusion 360. The model was imported from Solidworks to Fusion 360, where each part was assigned a material to render. Figure 1 shows an example of the overall guideway, with the pod and bogie hanging on it.  Figure 1.  Render of fully assembled guideway, pod, and bogie. The y-junction and y-switch rail for the guideway was also completed this week. The guideway team decided it was best to 3D print the third rail so that it could be manufactured in one go. This included suppo...

SSST Blog 4/29/2020 Progress for this week: Guideway: The guideway team has been focused on finishing the y-switch assemblies for the inner and outer loops. The y-switch assembly must be sturdy enough to hold the weight of the pod and easily assemble onto the guideway. The team received good feedback from Dr. Furman for adding a ramp feature to the third rail as shown in Figure 1 below. Figure 1 . Rounded entrance for the bearings attached to the bogie third rail. Dr. Furman introduced a scenario of a person leaning on the track, the gap between the inner and outer track pieces will cave inward. Corner supports were designed and added to the corners opposite end of the y-switch assemblies as additional support for keeping the guideway rigid as shown in Figure 2. The corner supports will be made from 0.25 inch thick MDF, which can be cut using the laser cutter in the Makerspace. Figure 2. Corner supports located on opposite end of y-switch.  In addition, the team is ...

SSST Blog 4/8/20 Progress for the week: Controls Team  One of the most anticipated moments in the iOS app developing journey was completed. This was to succesfully establish a connection to the BLE via the a custom-developed app. The issue that the team was having was that the UUID that was input into the code, was not the correct identifier. So essentially the code would be searching forever for a UUID that was not connectable. Once the team discovered the correct UUID, the connection was a breeze. The output screen of the succesfull connection can be seen below in Figure 1: Figure 1. Output screen of iOS app on Xcode.  Now that the app is connected to the BLE, the next step is to gain inspiration from the HM10 Serial app that the team has been using to test the components. In their app, once connected, the keyboard is used to send ASCII characters to the BLE and those values correspond to different stations on the guideway, these stations are different numbers and...

SSST Blog 4/15/2020 During this week's class meeting, all teams met with prof Furman to discuss the engineering ethics assignment. We had a very thoughtful discussion as a class in answering ethical questions about the Boeing 737 disaster and how engineers could have prevented it, by applying the engineering ethics. We discussed that three main engineering ethics were violated; the Fundamental canon, the Informed Consent, and the precautionary principle. We also discussed the best solution to take as an engineer if you found a problem at work that will have the potential to put people's lives in danger. After the discussion was over, we had some time as a team to discuss the progress of our work. Last week, the team presented their second presentation of the semester, and a lot of progress was done. The team went over the tasks that were a little behind and discussed how we will approach simulating our work using softwares like Solidworks. For bogie: Julio was able...

SSST Blog 4/9/2020 Progress for this week: Due to the recent changes that the team had to undergo, most of the week was spent refining and finilizing the new project goals. Controls Team Because the controls team does not rely heavily on what was available in the superway center, the scope for controls did not change much. Because time was spent adjusting and adapting, some dealines had to be pushed back and a complete physical system that incorporated the app, arduino and the two pods had to be set aside. However, both the iOS app and the arduino code will still be written so that it could work in unison to control the pods. This past week a successful table top sysetm of the motors and sensors (which include the servo motors and the pixy cam) was developed and tested. With the BLE connecting, research was conducted on how to incorporate user inputs that would send specific signals to the BLE. Guideway Team With out access to the superway center and the maker space the guidew...

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...

SSST Blog 3/11/2020 Progress for this week: Controls Team The stepper motor and the PixyCam are able to work together. After connecting an external power supply to power the stepper motor, the Arduino was able to provide adequate power to activate the PixyCam. When the PixyCam reads a barcode, it sends a signal to the stepper motor to stop. The iPhone application was finally able to get connected to the BLE as shown in Figure 1. The issue with connecting the iOS app to the BLE was due to using the wrong UUID. Figure 1. iOS app connected to BLE module. In addition, the second BLE module is being ordered on Amazon to be used for the second bogie. Guideway Team The outer loop of the guideway has been laser cut and assembled using washers and nuts as shown in Figure 2. The nuts and washers are used to sandwich each guideway piece together and can be tightened using an adjustable wrench. Figure 2. Outer loop and smaller inner loop of guideway assembled.  Initially ...

SSST Blog 3/4/20 Progress for the week: Controls Team: The controls team this week made significant progress with the pixy cam. The cam is now integrated into the main arduino code with the BLE, ultrasonic, and motor. The program waits for an input from the BLE then looks for the corresponding bar code, as shown in Figure 1., using the pixy while running the motor. It stops when the bar code is found.  Figure 1:  Bar codes that the Pixy cam will recognize as different stations.  The blog man who wrote the guide to connect the iOS app to the BLE also responded back to Julio, giving useful tips to try to fix the connection issues. These tips will be used in the upcoming week to help run the app smoothly.  Guideway Team: The outer loop of the track was assembled onto the base. Most if not all of the nuts, washers and rods were used, as well as the straight and curved pieces. More of these pieces and parts will need to be bought or manufactured in the Mak...

SSST Blog 2/27/20 Progress for the week: Controls Team  This week for the controls team, Asmaa made progress with the Pixy2 cam. She continued to work on learning how to use the Pixy cam software, she was also able to get the pixy cam to read different bar codes which will eventually represent stations on the guideway. Some of the bar codes that will be used for the Pixy cam to head to different stations can be seen below in figure 1: Figure 1: Bar codes that the Pixy cam will recognize as different stations.  Asmaa also worked on an Arduino code which implemented the Pixy cam into the prior codes that had been written. The Fritzing layout can be seen below in figure 3: Figure 2: Fritzing layout of implementation of Arduino and Pixy cam In terms of the app, progress was made with the connection between the iOS app and the BLE. A new guide was followed as to how to establish this connection, however, the app gets stuck in the scanning phase. Essentially, th...