The date is: Fri Jan 29 16:59:38 MST 1999 This last week I finished up our setup for proximity sensing with the GP1U5 2X. We have a voltage output range of 1.6 volts. We will also utilize the other Sharp sensor you ordered, so... Next week I will finish the setup for room detection and do signal conditioning for each. Rock on!! I dream about this class at night. Sometimes I wake up in a sweat.... love, Rob The date is: Tue Feb 9 14:23:22 MST 1999 Sorry this is late.. This week we got our parts from Granger for the track design, so we all got together to work on it. I abandoned the proximity sensor plans I had to help. This week I will pick up where I left off on the sharp sensor ranging. I jump into Mike's realm and help him wrap up the PWM ALTERA code and interfacing. We will play around with opto-isolators and get an order together for Digikey or something like that... I dig this class, Rob The date is: Fri Feb 12 17:40:34 MST 1999 I got the ranging done on the IR proximity. I achieved a voltage output range of .8 with one diode that I had and .5 with the other 4 commercial diodes I have. The first diode had a distance range of 6 - 23 cm and the others had a range of 11 - 40+ cm. We'll see in about two weeks how our purchased diodes will respond. If the respond like the other 4 I have, we'll have to use them for distancing dispite the decreased voltage resolution and put some gain into our buffering op-amp... no prob. This week, we'll be finishing up our track design and checking it out. I will characterize the D12 sensor performance and prepare for the presentations. The date is: Fri Feb 19 16:53:31 MST 1999 This week I finished our initial characterization of the GP1U5 and the D12 modules. I also prepared for the presentation. Next week, I will have the Protel design done for our sensor array and a board etched. I will be working with Mike doing the PCB design for our power grid also. Laters!! I'm busy having fun with Protel... The date is: Thu Feb 25 23:18:35 MST 1999 This last week, I've spent all my time making schematics and pc board designs in Protel. I designed our main sensor board and a signal conditioning board. The main sensor board even has a mechanical layer because I'm going to mount a vertical trapeziodal box onto the board itself. The box is for the D12's. By the way, have the others come in? By this time next week, my goal is to have not only both boards etched and populated, but the mechanical senosor mountings crafted as well. I will test them and jump over to help Mike with the power and Altera boards. I will then help Dave make the final touches on our UVtron flame sensor. After that, I will probably jump over to Jake's corner and help him finish the starter signal filter and our fans for extinguishing the flame. Based on these goals, we shouldn't have to work 24-7 over Spring Break to finish the sub-systems... The date is: Mon Mar 8 08:43:49 MST 1999 These last two weeks almost all I've done is on the robot. This week, Mike and I finished up our Protel designs for our sensor and hbridge boards. We went and etched them Tuesday. We've tested and populated them. So not only do we have designs ready for midterm review, but the week after SB, we should have working boards mounted on a moving bot. We will then begin our programming, bug to feature conversions, and finalization. I specifically worked over-time this week and also on the weekend so that I will have all the time during midterms week to study. My weekly report for that week will be next to nothing as a result. The date is: Fri Mar 12 11:20:34 MST 1999 This week I had planned to only study for all my midterms, but of course, we had some major problems with the ALTERA chip action. We stayed up till 3:30 AM Tues morning and till 2:30 last night. We have succeded and we have withnesses. It turns out that our data and clock lines on our ribon cable from the HC11 to the 7128-12 were capacitively coupling to the reset line. We swapped the HC11's reset chip for a better one, and then ran the reset separately. At that point, we could begin debugging any ALTERA problems. Before we couldn't, though, because the HC11 and the ALTERA were reseting spontaneously. Well, anyways, we found that by using D flip flops to latch data in, we were letting loose the full speed potential of the 7128-12 and it was way, way too fast for the HC11. We swapped the D's for latches, so we could hold the data long enough for the HC11 and give the HC11 enough time to put the data on the bus. After some more debug, we now have a fully operational driving subsystem. It's cherry, too. During Spring Break, I am going to mount all the sensors and PC boards. After SB, Jake and I are going to build a power board and re-do the fire sensor board while Mike and Dave work on the coding. The date is: Fri Apr 2 02:29:58 MST 1999 This week, we accomplished the unthinkable. We actually got that blasted ALTERA chip to work. We have a clean pulsing signal coming from the motors, but what noise it has becomes abnocious by the time the HC11 clock couples onto it. We put Schmidtt Triggers on the encoder signal and re-wirewrapped it. It is cherry now. We have full close loop control. I hope by next week, we will be wall following and have everything else mounted. I'd really like to go to Nationals. The date is: Sat Apr 10 21:41:01 MDT 1999 This week has been crazy. We got closed loop completed and performing well over last weekend. We even got decent wall following. We went in and decided to refigure everything so Mike and Dave could understand my emergency coding. We now have fully functioning closed loop with good code. We have wall following to the T and will add white line stuff to code tonight. We have everything mounted and individually working. Now to integrate... Hopefully, this next week, we wont make fools of anyone at Nationals. Woooo hooooo. The date is: Sat May 1 06:44:32 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 14:29:34 MDT 1999 Well, last week was rewarding AFTER the compitition. We had fan motor noise problems on Thursday. To fix it, we added a 10 uF decoupling capacitor across the terminals of the fan motor. We connected the motor frame to chasis ground and then realized that our real problem was that we were using the relay to drive +12 instead of the ground of the motor. We considered adding a flyback diode, but went for the money and used the relay to drive motor ground. That fixed it of course. That was the last hardware thing on our list. We spent all day and night Friday puting our code together for the contest. At 7 am, we realized that we couldn't be competitive with only one more hour before we had to get ready for the presentations. We threw together enough code to make a show of Trixie's finer points. I feel like this project has been the single most comprehesive learning I have done in all my history in Electrical Eng. Too much work, but really no other simple alternative to the learning required. I learned a lot about group dynamics! I have a great team!!!!!! We had a few really rough times, but for the most part we all were able to interact respectfully & integrally for success.