The date is: Fri Jan 29 11:40:56 MST 1999 In this week i have done two basics steps in the juniore design classe. The fist step is that i did my own researsch and reading from the book to get the knoweldge and see what is going on, the second step is that the menbers of my group an i discussed the stradegy of work and things that will be done this week and next week. in what concerne my reading i have learned learned the mechanics of the wheels and what kind of robot we will be desinging. Also i have learned about the dc motors that we will be using in our robot, like how is the speed being affected and how to controlle that and how to turne right and left. In orderto apply that there is a lot of programing going on, and pysics and mathematicall equations and analogue as well. Then i read aslo about the sensors the way they work and the type of sensors that we will be using, the one that will detect the light emitted by the candle and the other one to avoid collision with the wall. The menbers of the group and i have discussed many things that should be donne this week, we have planed and try to have an idea how to put the components so our robot will stay in equilibrium, like where the battery should be put in and what we will put in the second floor ad the third floor, and the placement of casters so the robot stay in a perfect balance. we have also tested the wheels and they work perfectly they spin logically more current the fastest it spins. we have discussed also how many snesors we will be using in order to detect the walls rigt now we agreed that 3 sensors will be in use. The only probleme we got this week is that some menber of the group was having probleme with starting his HC11 but thanx God another menber his HC11 works perfectly. The next week's plan is that we will be working on the motors, and sensors. We are going to try to make the H-bridge so we can controlle the motors both the right and the left motors. we also are looking for a cover of our robot and we have decided that we will buy a cookie cover just like the previous years. We still having problemes deciding on how to divide the group into sub groups so each menber of the group will be doing some specific job that he enjoy most doing. well that is all i have to say in this report this is just the basics things the story is much longer than tihis. NAJIB (CASABLANCA) The date is: Fri Feb 5 11:28:15 MST 1999 In this week we have done some changes in what concers the demagogy of the team. Our team is now devided into two little teams, the first team is the one responsible about the software part of the project the second team is the one responsible about the hardware, and of course we need to coarlate within each other software and hardware and see how things work. In this week i have done a lot of reasearch and thinking how to build an h-bridge board, we first read the data sheet and understand it well and what each thing do then we tried to test it and see if it works in theory. In the beginig it did not work because the connection was not good, but the next day it did work and our h-bridges works correctly and perfectly. We find out that our robot the right motore was not working properly because of some stiction, so now we have a new motore platforme that works properly. we designed our h-bridge board making sure that everything is well done, now our h-bridge is ready for action. The next week we are going to test the H-bridge board and see if it really works this will be done by tomorrow. we will also now work on sensors, we will work exactly on praximity sensors the hardware part of it of course trying to coralte that work with our software people. NAJIB (CASABLANCA) The date is: Fri Feb 12 14:14:56 MST 1999 In this week i have worked on the H-bridge board we did make sure that the board works perfectly and it did work without a probleme. we have also discussed where we will put the h-bridge board and the battery but we still did not do that because we dont want to cause any kinda trouble puting other stuff in the future. In the next week we are going to work on the sensors especially the wall sensore. NAJIB(CASABLANCA) The date is: Fri Feb 19 10:13:13 MST 1999 In this week we have been working on sensors, the wall sensors and the flame sensore. we finaly have decided to buy GP2D12 because they are much better , we have three of those they will be used for wall detection, we are going also to use photodiode and phototransistore for finding the flame and the line which will tell the robot that its in a new room. we have been also working on the presentation what each person will have to talk about, unfortunatly it did not work as planed. Next week we are going to be building the pc board assigned for sensors the wall and the flame sensors and also we are going to be taking in considaration the power distribution in our robot. The date is: Mon Mar 8 11:16:05 MST 1999 In this week i have been working on the flame sensore i tried to build a circuits for it, but before i talk about it . I had to abondon my work on low power distrubution because we can not do that unless i know what is the power budget for it, it was kinda impossible to build it and if we did im sure we will have problemes later on. the flame sensore i tried many configurations with it it seems that two of theme seems working perfectly we got the measurements they look pretty cool. but we have decided to get more accuracy measurements . So when i tried it back on saturday the same configuration did not work and that made me crazy. so now this sensore thing is not going as planned we will again try it on tuesday and then later in the week we will build the pc board for it. In this week we are going to finish the flame sensore we are going to use two of theme, we are going also to finish the wall proximity sensore and the line sensore. the line sensore works perfectly unless if something else happens. plus i will give it a push in the frequency to voltage converter. and at the same time i will try to calculate my power budget for my low power distrubition hopefully everything will work well. The date is: Fri Mar 12 11:11:57 MST 1999 In this week i have been working on the flame sensore, it was well build and everything expet we have one probleme with it wchich was that we could not get rid off the light of the room because our filter seems not working well. for now we just used a floppy desk but later on we will use an optical filter. well later on i tried another configuration but this time with a photodiode instead of a phototransistore it did not really work they were still some problemes of sensing and getting better measurements. this one really made me crazy so i changed back to another configuration i let my teammates work on it and it seems working pretty well. For next week i will be working on the freqeuncy to voltage converder i will design it and build its board hopefully no probleme will happen and i will think of an idea to finish my voltage regulatore now that we have line sensore and flame sensore done so we can know what is the power budget of each device. but still i have to be very carefull with my voltage regulatore. The date is: Thu Apr 1 14:40:55 MST 1999 In this week i start thinking of a design for the motore of the flame sensore. we want to build a motor that is able to turn from 0 to 2 pi and then back to 0 rad. right now we are thinking of using a four mosfets which is one h-bridge.i have been also trying to design board for the frequency to voltage converter i come up with some design i hope that one will work perfectly. Next week im planning to finish building the board of the frequency to voltage converter for both the right and the left motor all in one board. plus im thinking of new techniues to avoid noise that will be caused by the motors . and i will also work on the motore that wil rotate for the sensore. The date is: Thu Apr 8 21:13:20 MDT 1999 In this week i have been working on the pc boards for the frequency to voltage converter. i did also some reaserch about avoiding the noise for the robot. i ahve been working right now on the theory of shmith trigger and the comparaore, because next week we are going to use theme. we have been also discussing the flame sensore and the wall sensore, because we need to do some changes we need more accurate results. Next week i will be working on the falme sensore for better accuracy and the same thing for the proximity sensore. i will also be building shmith trigger for theme because we dont noise it will cause majore problemes for us. The date is: Fri Apr 23 12:35:38 MDT 1999 in this week i have been testing the robot, basically we are done with the hardware. im trying to see if the robot can make wall following, apparently for now we are having trouble with the programe. but the robot can go forward and straight wchich is cool. next week we are going to finsih the project hopefully we are going to test the wall following right and left front and back. then the white line and hopefully the candle. The date is: Thu May 6 20:31:17 MDT 1999 In this week basically nothing really interesting happened since we finished the presentation. we have discussed what each person will have to do during the reports that we need\ to submitt. we worked on the wall following and finally it does work properly thanx god. we finally make it to a good working robot it was a very interesting classe i loved it so much.