The date is: Fri Jan 29 11:44:30 MST 1999 THIS WEEK: I figured out the "better" solution to the maze, i.e. if we should use right or left hand wall following. Basically, we are going to use left hand wall following because the distance/time to go from room 1 to room 2 is short, roughly 32". I also considered the room factor (room factor 1=1.00, room factor 2=.9, etc.), however in initial testing and design i think are going to get better results with the time from room 1 to room 2 than the room factors using the right hand wall following. I hope this explaination makes some kind of sense. I also worked on the overall scheme of how the HC11 and the Altera chip will be hooked together. At this point, I am going to use the HC11 to do the interrupts, the wall following scheme, and anything else that may come up. The Altera chip is going to handle the PWM and the clock division. The clock division is to divide the 2MHz to the proper frequency where there is no more humming in the motor. Motor 1 stopped at 650Hz, and motor 2 stopped at 950Hz. Thus we have to divide the 2MHz down to 950Hz. Finally, I helped in the proximity IR detector debugging part. I found out that the IR detector works fine, voltages range about 2.5V. The voltage does decrease as the wall is farther away. Now we tried to amplify the signal, but the op-amp stages is in trouble. Basically, we are using a 2-stage inverting op-amps. It is in trouble, it is being saturated somehow. We are not sure what is going on yet though. NEXT WEEK: I am going to sit down at "restudy" the HC11. I need to figure out what I need to do to the HC11 and what ports, and interrupts, etc I am going to use for the robot. I am still not sure what the HC11 will be doing but I will analyze the situation and go from there. Also, I will start programming for the wall following scheme. The "restudying" of the HC11 will help out in this part of the project. I think these 2 minor projects will take up a lot of all next week. So, this is what I will be doing next week. P.S. Just a reminder that I missed 3 days from a personal trip, thus i may have not done enough work this week. Will make up though. The date is: Fri Feb 5 08:26:13 MST 1999 THIS WEEK: First, I wrote a small little test program to make sure that I knew what I was doing with the A/D on the HC11. At first, I had lots of problems like i was putting the btext at 0x0200 and it wouldn't fit on the chip, so i had to put it in extended memory 0x2000, and then it all fit together. Another problem were the 411s i was using as a follower. I found out that 2 of them were no good. Finally on the 3rd try, i got lucky and found a 411 that was good to go. Obviously, one of the biggest problem was trying to remember how to do everything with the HC11. In the end, the program got loaded into the chip and everything was good. i had a print statement in the program so when we varied the voltages into the A/D, the measurements varied also accordingly to the voltages. Now we know how to use the A/D again. I also started to write all of the programs for the HC11 such as the wall following, a/d setup, interrupts, turns program. Most of it is pretty much done. I didn't have much problems, just because i really can't start debugging or anything until i have something to test it on. there are obviously some kinks in them still such as finding the scalar constants. I also kind of worked on the battery like soldering some wires to it, to use later on in the project. this was just something i needed to do eventually. NEXT WEEK: probably finish off the programming part of it. basically i just want all of the programs to be ready so when we do have h-bridges/motors/platform ready, i can just load the programs in and start testing/debugging. there are still lots of little schemes i still need to figure out such as how to return home, turn without stopping, etc. if i have time still, i need to design a simple switch as to turn on the robot or off. I think this will probably be it just because the programming part will take awhile to figure out. The date is: Fri Feb 12 08:46:51 MST 1999 THIS WEEK: I finished work on the first battery, soldered wires to the connectors, and to the battery. I worked on the GP2D12 sensors. I took measurments of its voltage range from 10cm to 80cm. The measurements were comparable to the data sheets. The GP2D12 sensors worked so well that we might just use them for all of our wall following instead of the GP1U52X proximity sensors modules. GP2D12 uses less wires and requires no other IC's in combination except a A/D to the HC11. I also looked into the UVtron series from Hamamatsu for the flame detection. Should find out more about them in the next coming week. Ben and I was worked on the HC11 and closed loop Altera scheme. We decided to make Altera have the closed loop and "simply" use the HC11 for navigation. Basically, Altera is going to handle all of the motor control. We will using 8 bits each for the left and right motors. 1 bit as direction and 7 bits of resolution, which is about .5% duty cycle per number. We tried to test our theory out, but nothing was working with the Altera chip. We are still not sure what is going on. Will find out next week. NEXT WEEK: Produce a simple HC11 and ALtera code such that our theory works. For Ben and I right now, the HC11 and PWM modules is the most important aspect. We need this whole module to work extremely well for wall following sake. This part is probably going to take the longest time to test, as to get the constants all in range. We are hoping that once this part is done, everything else should come "easy," except for maybe H-bridges. If I have some time, I will work on the UVtron series sensors for the flame detection. The date is: Fri Feb 19 15:43:46 MST 1999 THIS WEEK: Not much got done this week because 4 tests and a prelimary design presentation doesn't really leave much time left to work on the actual project. However i did manage to do some work on the project. the memory-mapped test for the hc11 and altera works. i also modified my navigation program to include the memory-mapped part for the altera program. in addition, i investigated how to setup the hc11 to read in the second white line as for the complete entry into a room, and to recognize the second front white line detection for closeness to the candle. finally, we investigate how to setup the h-bridges by looking at the data sheets, and figured out what we need to do for this part. NEXT WEEK: finish modifing the code for the navigation by the hc11 and do some tests for the hc11 and altera together. also luckily, i got hamamatsu to give me a sample of the uvtron series board and sensor. so i will probably want to play with that, to see its actual range ang angular ability. hopefully i will still have some time left to study for a ee342 test on friday. :-) The date is: Thu Feb 25 18:04:37 MST 1999 THIS WEEK: The UVtron series, board and sensor, came in this week. I read up on the data sheets, and i realize that the UVtron is very nice. It has a very wide angular ability as well as a good distance sensor. So overall, i was very pleased with Hamamatsu. I also played with the frequency to voltage converters. With our motors at no-load, the frequency is 50khz, so with the load i predict the frequency to be at 25khz. Also with 20-80% duty cycle, the frequency of the motors will probably be about 20khz. knowing this, i figured out which resistors and capacitors i need to get the FVC to peak out at about 20khz with a voltage of 3.66. So i am learning microsim to print the actual circuit board so i can go etch the boards. Also i worked on just a simple closed-loop program for the hc11 to try to make the robot go straight. NEXT WEEK: hopefully if all goes well, i should have the fvc boards ready to go, and Will should have the h-bridge circuits ready to go. Once we add the optoisolators to the h-bridge circuits, and the closed-loop program, we should be able to start testing the actual base of the robot. Hopefully i will be able to finish this program, and if i have some time i will probably work on the UVtron series. That should be about it. thanks The date is: Thu Mar 4 21:19:23 MST 1999 THIS WEEK: I finished building the 2 fvc boards and tested them with the actual encoders/motors. it is all good. the only problem was that i had to add a capacitor from the encoder to the input of the fvc. this capacitor basically removed all of the dc component of the signal, and then the boards worked perfectly. i am very excited about this. i also finished modifying my simple go straight program for the hc11 as a beginning test for our robot. the modifications dealt with conversions and trying to the the desired speed for left and right to be between 0 and 255 ( or 20% to 80% duty cycle). i think i have a handle on it now. also i spent most of my time this week making simple parts for the robot such as the wires for the encoders, powers, etc. NEXT WEEK: this next week should be a good determining factor for our robot. i think we have almost all of the components for the base ready to go for testing (going straight). thus i will be probably playing around with the robot and the straight program for awhile as to get the proportional gains good enough. also, for the midterm review, i have to prepare the uvtron board/sensor. there are a couple of components that i need to solder on and then it should be ready for testing. if all of this goes well, we should be in good shape for the midterm review. then we are ready for the REAL action. :-) The date is: Fri Mar 12 00:57:36 MST 1999 THIS WEEK: A lot of good things happen this week. Besides the simple stuff like making the wires for the connectors for the power and encoder for the motors, I also tested a lot of other things. I put some threads on our caster and started to develop the base of our robot. So basically, the basement of our robot is pretty much good to go. The best thing that happen is that the h-bridges/altera/motor worked good. One of the problems that we had was to figure out the problem with the different reference grounds. After solving that problem, we hooked everything up to the base of the robot and had it go. Well it went but not the way we wanted it to. We really have some issues to work out still though. NEXT WEEK: After the good start this week, I will try to work on my program to eventually have the robot go straight. Also we have to design and mount the h-bridges, fvc, and hc11. I also have to make some power strips for all of our power supply. The testing of the robot, an actual moving robot, will take most of the time up. Also it is spring break, and I will not be here so hopefully my expectations will be meet but I don't think so. The date is: Sat Apr 3 16:41:40 MST 1999 THIS WEEK: We mainly worked on my wall-following scheme. I had lots of trouble finding the correct constants for the proportional controller. I think i still need to do some more work on those constants too. After that, i started working on the wall sensors for the wall-following scheme. I decided on a desired distance, and worked from there. The robot follows the wall very well, and in a very straight line. Thus closed loop works. NEXT WEEK: Continue to work on the wall-following scheme. I ran into some trouble with the white line detector because it was too sensitive. I fixed that problem, and will take lots of endless hours doing the wall-following scheme. Thats all for me next week. Pray for me. The date is: Fri Apr 9 15:03:47 MDT 1999 THIS WEEK: Well, not much happened this week. I spent most of the week working on hardward problems, especially the white line sensor. We are using ir emitter and detectors right now, but I think we are going to make a new design for the white line sensor. I also worked on the coding part of the HC11, such as the the scanning mode and return home algorithms. All in all, not much happen this week. By the end of the week, I think we finally fixed our white line problem. Hopefully, I will know more about it next week. NEXT WEEK: National's are this week, so I will send most of my time in the lab working and testing on the algorithms. I think my wall-following algorithm is pretty much good to go right now. I just have to work on the scanning fire algorithm, and if I have time I will also add in the return home functions. That's all I hope! The date is: Sun May 2 15:31:08 MDT 1999 THIS WEEK: Not much happened this week. we mainly spent our time refining our code and preparing for our final oral presentation. that was about all i did. sorry i don't have much to say but we really didnt do anything this week. NEXT WEEK: relax and get some sleep and try to remember that i have other classes to attend too. The date is: Thu May 6 15:21:42 MDT 1999 THIS WEEK: The truth is i really didn't do much on the project this week. i mainly cleaned the cabinet and overall got ready for the final review. also, i started discussing with my partners about the final paper such as who has what part and stuff like that. NEXT WEEK: nothing except for maybe finishing up the final paper.