Week 30 (May 8, 2019): Prototype Evaluation Day, Final Circuit, Incorporating 3D printed parts, Final Presentation, Posters, & Maker Faire

-
Today, we held Prototype Evaluation Day. Like the rest of the senior project classes, the advisor walks around the classroom, evaluating the senior project apparatuses, asking the student teams to demonstrate their devices, and explain their design, though processes, and results. Dr. Furman and Ron examined and inspected the Full-Scale model, then the Half-Scale model, and lastly, us, the Small-Scale Team.

We had completed our circuit to power one pod car and one of the two induction charging stations prior to Evaluation Day, so we were able to successfully demonstrate the pod car driving around the track as well as the induction charging. While we were still troubleshooting issues with the tablet’s Raspberry Pi communicating with the Arduino, the Arduino is still capable of operating on its own, so we could at least demonstrate the motor driving the pod car around the track and through the offline stations.

Depicted below is our final circuit that powers the pod car:


Depicted in the images below are one of our completed induction charging stations; also featured is the new pod car door with the induction receiver coil pressed into place:


Later in the week, on Friday, May 10, 2019, we presented our final presentations. Please find our presentation slides embedded below. Ultimately, we presented everything we had to show and all of our efforts, and despite the fact that we still had some troubleshoot issues, we believed we were on our way of achieving 100% completion.  


The following week, we will have our on-site Maker Faire, where we will demonstrate our operating model. Please find portrayed, below, our Small-Scale Controls Team poster:


One final note: Although we are different divisions of the overall Small-Scale model, all three Small-Scale sub-teams – Bogie, Controls, and Track, we all worked together well since the beginning and were all able to come together as one in the second half of ME 195B to put everything together, and we couldn’t be more happy to be working with the teammates we’ve been working with: 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 6 (Oct. 3, 2018): Coordination with the Small-Scale Bogie and Track Team

-
Image
Today, we discussed overlapping aspects of the small-scale system with the bogie team and the tracks team. The track team has settled on a design for the new track: a rectangular shape track with a Y-junction junction in the center to accommodate two charging stations, one at each branch. We are hoping to implement induction charging at these stations, which requires a 3.7 V Li-ion battery. Something else to consider is if we can use a transistor to amplify the current draw from the induction charger to speed up charging of the Li-ion battery and if we can use a boost converter (step-up transformer) for the brushless motor we will use. With the bogie team, we discussed motor sizing, as this selecting the appropriate motor would affect the force that the wheels would experience, and thus the design of the bogie. The force of the motor would be found by: (1) determining the power supply current output to the motor, I ; (2) converting the speed constant, K V , which is provided ...
Read more

Week 10 (Oct. 31, 2018): Battery Selection

-
Image
 UPDATE: Calculations for the induction charging and battery are found in the Week 14 and Week 15 blog posts. After finishing the last of the Presentation #2’s, time was provided to continue working on our projects. The first subject we wanted to address was to finalize the selection of our battery. So, we listed the pros and cons of the three main battery types: LiPo (Lithium-Polymer), NiMH (Nickel-Metal-Hydride), and Li-ion (Lithium-ion).   Sources: Roger’s Hobby Center | A Guide to Understanding LiPo Batteries and NiMH Vs LiPo Batteries - Which is better? and All About Batteries We eventually decided that we will be using LiPo batteries, like last year’s team, since they are more efficient and have a high energy density, along with their other benefits that outweigh their disadvantages and dominate the other battery types. Also, the fact that mini-LiPo chargers exist, such as the one below from Adafruit, will make charging more robust due to its compact de...
Read more

Week 25 (Apr. 3, 2019): Current Amplification Solved via Buck Converter

-
Image
Today, we made the decision of going with the 12V, 600mA induction coil set, as they allowed for a greater distance between the transmitter and receiver, which was a maximum distance of 0.787 inches, as opposed to the 5V, 1500mA induction coil set, which had a maximum charge distance of 0.5 inches. As a reminder, we are implementing induction charging, also known as wireless charging, to charge the 3.7V Li-ion battery at designated charging stations within the track. This helps to enforce autonomy, which will further eliminate human intervention and manual maintenance of the system. Because the charge current is smaller, we tried to find a way to increase the charge current used to charge the battery. We settled upon using a buck converter, which decreases voltage with the advantage of increasing current. The buck converter would be placed after the induction receiver and before the battery charger. After some testing, we found that the buck converter could amplify the curren...
Read more