The date is: Fri Jan 29 13:46:33 MST 1999 Not much happened with our project this week. We have decided to pursue a track drive system, so the majority of the groups time this week was dedicated to developing a design. Since the drive system is one of the most critical compononts of the robot, my group decided to do the design as a team effort. After discussing options with various people, we have decided on a system similar to one built by John Sinnott. Construction of the drive system will begin next week. On an individual level, I have been given the task of developing a PWM controller in Altera. We decided on using Altera for the PWM because this will significantly reduce the load placed on our HC11. I am developing the PWM controller as a modular program. This week, the core module was completed and tested with great success. Next week, the core module will be integrated into an interface module which will allow communication with the HC11. Hopefully, the entire PWM system will be completed and fully tested by the end of next week. Once the PWM controller is complete, I will begin interfacing the H-Bridges and the motors to it. If all goes according to plan, the motor control hardware will be in place and tested within 2 weeks. MD 1/29/99 The date is: Thu Feb 4 17:22:24 MST 1999 This week, group 6 continued to refine the design for our drive system. We purchased the belts, drive gears, and bearings that we'll need. We also began the layout of the components on the base plate. Hopefully, we're ready to begin construction of the drive system ASAP next week. Dave and Jake will handle the construction. We hope to have the drive system mostly complete by the end of next week. Personally, I continued to work on the PWM controller. I didn't get as far with it as I had hoped, but it's coming along. The core modules as well as the clock divider module are finished and fully tested. The interface module is nearly complete. By the end of next week, I hope to have the PWM controller complete and ready for final testing. It will be tested using the HC11 ports A&B initially, but will be placed on the HC11 bus for it's final configuration. Minimal modifications will be necessary to accomplish this. If all goes well, the controller will be complete and fully interfaced to the HC11 before the design review. The date is: Thu Feb 11 17:47:16 MST 1999 Well, this week I finished the code on the Altera PWM controller. Both cores and the clock generator were integrated with an interface module for the HC11 bus. The interface module is untested, but testing it will require a wire wrap job. I will probably wrap a socket to the EVBU Tuesday then begin testing. Once the PWM controller is fully tested, the possibility of adding pulse accumulators to the same chip will be explored. I dont know if the PAC's and the PWM will fit on a single EPM7064, but I will try my best to make it work. The PAC's will be used to count encoder pulses for our speed sensing. I also spent some time this week working on the base. The base is about 1/2 way done, and is looking quite good. I guess I'll split my time next week between the PWM testing and the base work. I also plan to work on a PCB layout for the 18200's this weekend. Once the PCB is done and the PWM works, I'll begin work on the motor controll with Dave. MD 2/11 The date is: Fri Feb 19 17:01:27 MST 1999 Well, the base was completed this week. This was a major accomplishment for the group. Since the presentation was this week, not much else got done. The altera code is finished, but testing has been put on hold until we can get an altera 7128. Hopefully, we can get our hands on one sometime next week. Next week I will devote my time to doing H-bridge PCB work in Protel. I will also get with Dave and work on some initial control code development. MD 2/19 The date is: Thu Feb 25 18:26:17 MST 1999 Well, not too much happened tihs week. I had a job interview with LANL Tuesday, so I missed the last half of class. Before the interview, however, I worked with Dave and Jake doing a test run of the motors and the chassis. There was no control for this test. The batteries were simply wired up to the motors and the 'bot turned loose. With both motors turning the same direction, the bot went fairly straight. It had some turning tendancy, but this is to be expected without control. With the motors turning opposite to each other, the bot turned nicely in place. The best part was that the belts stayed on during both tests. Thursday I spent all my time on Protel working on a good h-bridge PCB design. This work is about halfway finished at this point. I expect to etch and test the board early next week. I expect no major problems in this area. Currently, the PWM testing has come to a grinding halt. We are waiting on some Altera 7128's before we can procede. Hopefully they will come in before Spring Break. I think Dr. Rison has one we could possibly borrow if it looks like the others wont come in it time. Next week, I plan to finish etching and testing the H-Bridge board. Once this is complete I will either move on to the power distribution subsystem, or test the PWM (if the parts get here). With lots of luck, we hope to have all the bits and pieces working by midterm review. MD 2/25 The date is: Thu Mar 4 17:50:35 MST 1999 Well, this week several things were accomplished. I got the HBridge schematic drawn up, routed, and printed. Doing that took all day Tuesday. Thursday, I began populating the board in preparation for testing. I also got the Altera stuff ready to be wire wrapped. Rob and Dave are going to do the wrapping this weekend as well as work with Rob's newly etched sensor board and Dave's IR fire sensor. I expect that the Altera will be fully integrated and tested by the end of next week. I also plan to have the HBridge stuff fully tested and integrated by the end of next week. This means that we should be able to let the 'bot run around under HC11 control before the Midterm Review. As far as the review is concerned, I think that we should have all the critical subsystems up and running on time. It will be tight, but at this point, I am confident we will make it. MD 3/4/99 The date is: Fri Mar 12 11:22:11 MST 1999 There was major excitement in Group 6 this week. We began final testing of all major subsystems in preparation for the design review next week. All testing was done as a group to speed the process. Sensor and signal conditioning testing went well and no major problems tuned up. HBridge testing was also flawless, but the Altera PWM gave us seemingly endless problems. We initially had trouble with the E-Clock coupling onto the reset line causing the HC11 to hang on boot. (Finally a use for all the stuff they made us learn in E&M.) We solved this by changing HC11's, undervoltage lockout circuits, and by moving the reset to a different cable (away from the offending E-Clock line). Once this was solved, we began debugging the interface on the Altera that allows it to talk to the HC11's address and data bus. Several code revisions later, the interface worked, but our PWM and PACs were dead. It took working until 3AM on Tuesday and Thursday and too many code revisions to count to get the PWM and the PACs to behave. It seems to be good to go now. We even had the HC11/Altera hooked up to the Hbridges and motors and everything worked great. We even have witnesses (George and Matt). We have decided that we're ready for the review, so absolutely nothing is going to happen next week. Group 6 will be sleeping in all next week in celebration of our success. MD 3/12 The date is: Sat Apr 3 19:56:14 MST 1999 Due to the big excitemet over the three day weekend, this week's report is a little late. I'm sorry, but I simply forgot. Since last weeks reports got lost, heres a little summary. We worked late into the night to get Trixie rolling. Now we have a complete robot (no code yet though). Now for this week. During initial hardware validation, a problem was noticed on the Pulse Accumulators. They seemed to be working more like free running counters than PAC's. Due to the simplicity of the hardware, we initially thought the code was at fault. Several days were spent looking at the code with no luck. By Tuesday of this week, we decided that the code was not at fault, so we decided to investigate the hardware a little. (I'm using 'we' here because although the PAC's were my design the testing was done by Mr Bonal, Mr Niemand and myself in an attempt to be completely sure nothing was overlooked.) We began by wiring the PAC clock up to PIA-A on the HC11 and writing a little code to toggle the clock and display what happened to the PC screen. During this test, we noticed that the PAC's seemed to count to the same value during a fixed interval of time. It began to look suspicially like the E-clock was coupling over to the PAC clocks. This led us to put the clock line on the 'scope. We found that the PAC clock lines had ~2V noise spikes on them (probably caused by E-clock coupling as originally assumed). Since the Altera that implements the PAC's is a 3.3V device, ~2V spikes are above the switching threshold. Thus the mystery was solved. To correct the problem, we threw some (2) schmidt trigger inverters on each clock line and we were back in business. Who knew such a simple problem would kill off a whole week. Next week will be code, code, code. We (Dave and I) hope to get closed loop up and running. Hopefully, this will be done by Thursday and we can begin working on some wall following. The progress of the wall following depends upon Robert having sensors fully functional by the end of the week. Again, I am sorry for the late (and long) report. MD 4/3/99 The date is: Thu Apr 8 17:29:19 MDT 1999 Well, Trixie has been given an opportunity to compete in the national competition. This kinda messed up our scheduling for the completion of the robot. Now, we need to have it all working by the end of next week. With this in mind, we changed the priorities on things a bit. Dave and I had originally planned to work on the code this week, but that has been put off until this weekend. Instead, I helped Rob finish up the base this week. We got most of the boards mounted, and also finished up mounting the sensors and cleaning up the wiring(connectors, routing, etc.). We only have a few things to finish up tomorrow and the base will be basically wrapped up. Once the base is finished, Dave and I can hit the code hard. Looks like we'll be spending most of the weekend, as well as next week, in the lab trying to get things wrapped up with the code. Hopefully, we'll be able to get everyting working by the end of next week. MD 4/8 The date is: Sat May 1 06:44:58 MDT 1999 Noise is not our friend. ANY QUESTIONS?!! Uh, we are going to stay up all night tonight to see what we can get. After fan motor overhual, we now have a fully functional death trixie. We'll see how things go... love, TRIXIE The date is: Thu May 6 10:24:55 MDT 1999 Well, Trixie was mostly operational for the demonstration on Saturday. The only task remaining is the final paper, which we spent this week working on. we intend to have it finalized and ready for submission by saturday. MD 5/6/99