Week 2

This week I researched how to wire a stepper motor with eight leads to the motor driver. After that, I hooked it up to test to see if the motor runs and it did. Then I tried to do it wireless, but the speed of the motor declined, and the torque difference is unknown between direct connection and wireless. 

I also worked on the bill of materials and researched the lead times and finalized the sheet with Eric, which the parts should all be ordered today. Putting faith that the main contactor will arrive in five to six days and the precharge resistor in seven days, we hope that we can try to run the large motor by next Thursday.

I also worked on the linear actuator to get it to function. The green linear actuator is broken while the black one is functional. I used a simple code to see if the actuator can go in and out, but for some reason it did not work. Then two hours later, the actuator worked with the same exact code for some odd reason. Now, I have to work with the other team to incorporate the hall sensors and synthesize a code to make the linear actuator carry out the desired application.

Week 1

Design Week:

In the control's team, the goal for the first week was to do research on the BLDC motor and the motor controller that the team had in possession and to test out the components such as the potentiometer, ultrasonic sensor, joystick, and wireless modules with Arduino boards.

Individually, I mainly used online resources to do research and figure out how to work some of the components with the Arduino. I used the link:

https://howtomechatronics.com/tutorials/arduino/arduino-wireless-communication-nrf24l01-tutorial/

to learn how to do the wiring for the transmitter and receiver onto the Arduino. Next, I downloaded the software online to do a simple "Hello World" text to see if the transmitter and receiver were working probably. We needed this basic objective to work in order to control the motor wirelessly. For some reason, the simple task did not work, but when my team member Akshay took it home to diagnose it; it worked perfectly fine with the same exact procedure. Then we figured that one of the nrF24 chips was probably programmed only to transmit because he said that he switched the function of the chips and it worked. Currently, to note which one only works as a transmitter, the chip without any red wires connected to the Arduino is the one that only works as a transmitter.

I also thoroughly lead the online large motor class on instructables that was on the link sent in the email by Eric to learn more about large motors. I learned about the parts that we need in to run a large motor with the certain applications that we need. I watched youtube videos on the specific motor controller devices that we had and learned that some people used the motor without a contactor or a precharge resistor while some did include those parts in their circuit. The difference that I saw that the ones without a contactor and precharge resistor had a low voltage application. Assuming that we need a torque to move the bogie, we will need the motor to draw a lot of current so we will probably need a contactor and precharge resistor for the circuit.