Day Forty-Five

Worked the kinks outta the program except one, it only works in the forward direction but not reverse. Dave H and I started working on maintaining speed while under load. It didn't work. Our teach said that we may have to go back to my original encoder based program to actually make good progress. The MMBe has aspects of itself that limit what we NEED to do.

Day Forty-Four

Today we, Dave H. and I, re-wired the microcontroller for neatness and safety for the circuit. In this way, we do not have lots of looping wires going hither and thither. Then we retested the circuit to verify that everything worked as it did on Day 43. 'Twas a success. Tomorrow, Day 45, we will be working on cleaning out the bugs in the Forward/Reverse program that Dave H. wrote the beginning of last week.

Larry J. and John are working on getting the pneumatic hand/claw working on our arm.

Day Forty-Three

So we didn't actually work on that program today. Larry, John and I worked on getting the pneumatic intake from one of the non-operational arms onto our arm. It was screwed on TIGHT. Afterwards, we looked for a quick connect system for that intake. The intake is to operate the pneumatic solenoid for the claw/hand of the arm we are working on. The searching and removing and fitting took about 45 minutes. The remaining 5 minutes of class and the next 105 minutes after that was spent working with the MMBE chip on another microcontroller board. I was working with Dave and the teacher, Michael, to get the counter portion of the program reading at the right time. Mostly my part was watching and learning, as this part of the project I had not been working on. I have a decent idea as to what they are wanting to happen, but I'm hoping I'll get a clearer answer on Day 44. At that time, I'll write it down here, along with a cleaned up code of what the Michael and Dave have achieved so far.

Day Forty-Two

I worked with Larry J. on his interface program, we were hung up so long on how to get the text output to not flicker or scroll. Eric F. had to give us the clue we needed to fix that. Also the previous problems we were having on Day 41 was due to a damage crystals on the board we were using. Hopefully we make good progress on Day 43 for me to be able to post something regarding that!

Day Forty-One

Today Larry and I started writing a program that would allow for push button control of each servo. One button for the servo number and then in conjunction with that, specifically while the aforesaid button is pressed down, either the forward or reverse button. At the moment, we are just trying to get it to display strings when both buttons are pushed together. When we have a whole, albeit basic, program written, I'll post that.

Day Forty

Not much done. I assisted Dave H. with his program. Specifically with syntax and program flow. As it is not my program, I do not have a copy of it to post. The purpose of the program was kinda lost on me also. He just asked me what he needed to write to perform this or that action, and I responded.

Day Thirty-Nine

Connected the new wires I needed to make. Plugged in the additional encoders. I just had to add outputs from the newly added encoders into my program. It worked perfectly. (Though it did take about 40 minutes to get the wiring for the breaks to be disabled/powered at the same time, ugh) Now I am able to read direction and amount of movement from all 5 encoders at one time, as well as, being able to disengage all 4 breaks at once so the arm can do whatever it is we want it to do! As my end of the week project is now completed, I shall help Dave and Larry with their programming of the MMBEs.

Day Thirty-Eight

I need new wires to connect the other encoders, via the umbilical terminal to my microcontroller. The existing wires are all breaking down. So I made new wires today. Not terribly productive towards the end project but will help me get to this week's end goal of being able to read from all 5 encoders at once as well as being able to release all 4 breaks at once. 

Making new wires, hand crimping on new male and female ends... VERY time consuming. 

Day Thirty-Seven

Had a meeting as to what to do this week. I am to continue on my Encoder project and assist others in interfacing with what has been labeled, for better or worse, as my encoders. I'll start by wiring the brakes into one line, then connect the umbilical to the parallax microcontroller. THEN, I'll start inputting a repeat of my original program, which i posted a week or 2 ago, to run and track 2-5 encoders at once. I'll be adding 1 encoder at a time. Getting the 2nd encoder to work with the first in the existing program is going to be tough. Encoders 3-5 will be easy after I learn how to put in the 2nd encoder.

Day Thirty-Six

Today I was called off from my encoder work to help the other group integrate my encoder programming with their MMBE (Motor Mind B-enhanced) program. Purpose was to see if the MMBE could take the encoder input and give a processed output. No such luck. They were all working still on relearning to write in SPIN and making an interface program to work between the computer and the MMBE. So, I just spent the day reminding and advising Dave H. and Larry J. regarding their SPIN programs. I offered to Eric F. but he likes doing all his programming alone. Even though I had solutions to his frustrations. Oh well. It was a wasted day for me, but it helped the others progress in our project.

Day Thirty-Five

Now that I have my plan, I will be creating a wire packet (essentially 2 CAT5's with 1 extra strand) for a 17 wire tidy output to go into my board. I'm considering soldering my break lines together so that i need only 13 wires. Giving me 3 spare wires for later on. If I complete attaching the connector tips to the 16 strands of wire before time is out, then I'll start wiring it up and then modify the code. After the code is modified, tested, and works, then I'll post that.

Day Thirty-Four

Today I spent my time designing and planning a new wiring scheme for a multi-encoder program. Which I'll fiddle with later. It's basically the same as the last program posted just with more variables and more wires. Fun!

Day Thirty-Three

Today we had our weekly meeting. We decided what needed doing: interfacing the motor, learning more about the Motor Mind controller cards that Prof. bought for us.

Day Thirty-Two

Studying for PLC II exam, didn't work on the Project. Exam is today.

Edit: I aced my exam, woohoo!

Day Thirty-One

Studying for PLC II exam, didn't work on the Project.

Day Thirty

Researched on how to do an efficient wiring setup for the arms rather that the direct encoder input/output wires. Too messy. At the end of the day, I'm still lost as to which wires I'll actually need to hook up. Will continue when I have time, maybe Day Thirty-Three.