This past week was spent on the final testing. Stanley Jr and his programs for the most part work fine by themselves but when put together it’s just too much for him to handle. When the compass and GPS programming is by itself he’ll reach his goal but he can only do it without the sensors. Continue reading As far as he’ll go!
Category Archives: Autonomous GPS Car
Almost There!!!!
Stanley is so close to being ready for the GPS and the real world! At the beginning of the week we realized he was having problems clearing walls and fixing that became our number one priority. We created two new counting variables that work very similarly to the at of the steering mechanism in the way that while it’s counting the motor stays still. Continue reading Almost There!!!!
A Couple Steps Forward and a Few Steps Back
There were a lot interesting and mixed feelings about this weeks progress. We moved the steering peg closer to the center of rotation so the steering would move twice as fast. This allowed it to keep up with the motor but we didn’t realize the headaches that would come with it. Continue reading A Couple Steps Forward and a Few Steps Back
Down to a halt
So this week………
I come back to school from the weekend to find that Stanley didn’t want to work. He would run the motor fine but the steering was doing absolutely nothing for us. Continue reading Down to a halt
P for progress
New parts and a New Stanley! In order to replace the h-bridges we were able to get our hand on a motor shield that can handle both the actuator and car motor at the same time. Along with that Mr. Bahn welded a new bolt closer to the center of rotation on the steering axel. This new leverage now allows the actuator to steer the car twice as fast, but at the priced of putting a good bit of stress on the cars frame. This faster steering allows us to not only up the speed of the car but slow down the motion sensors . Continue reading P for progress
Progress?
The title of this post is a reference to bumps and bruises we had to deal with throughout the week. Mr. Bahn created a fantastic steering process for the car that couldn’t honestly work any better than it already has. The software for the car now includes a dummy variable “t” and a goal variable “g”, these two variables work together inside three if statements in order to determine the position of the actuator. Continue reading Progress?
Little Stanley Jr.
After coming back to from Seattle I wanted to do nothing more than work on my care, but Stanley didn’t want to. While I was gone we had the shop teacher, Mr. Bowen, create a steering lever for the car. The lever is a mechanism with a turning arm that rotates in order to turn Stanley left and right. By using the linear actuator the arm could be pushed and pulled to steer. Continue reading Little Stanley Jr.
Long Week
Coming back from vacation it does seem like my car hates me a little bit for leaving. Honestly, the word “steering” had never been so threatening until this week. Continue reading Long Week
Harmonic Motion
I was able to hook up the motion sensor and the car together in order for the car to stop when near an object, and later to actually avoid objects. Continue reading Harmonic Motion
Motion Sensor Madness
This week was specifically focused on using a motion sensor to control a small motor. The code up above has a simple void loop filled with a couple “if” statements. If there is an object close to the sensor the motor stops, in order to simulate breaking, otherwise the motor just keeps spinning forward. The function at the bottom actually uses the echo pin to find how long it takes to get that echo and from there it calculates how far the object is in cm. I didn’t create the function so here’s the link to the webpage where I got a good chunk of the code http://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-Arduino-and-HC-SR04-Example/