The 2008 contest announcement is finally available. The contest will involve following the tape (of course) while navigating around barriers, and launching Alka-Seltzer tablets into a water tank.
TEAM 1: Ao, Ellerson*, Jordan, Lopez
TEAM 2: Courney, Do, Madala*, Miner
TEAM 3: Apache, Butner*, Huckins, Quintana
TEAM 4: Aguilar, Jaw, Polusani, Ulrich*
One person on each team is the KEY PERSON, who is responsible for the Room 322 key. That person is denoted with an asterisk (*).
The key must be returned at the end of the semester.
Motor Calibration. Here is a writeup of the Motor Calibration assignment. Each team is to perform this calibration on one or more motors and submit all relevant documentation by Monday, February 18, 2008.
QRB 1114 IR Reflectance Sensor Calibration. Curvature Prediction/Sensor Calibration assignment. Each team should perform this curvature prediction experiments and also do the IR sensor calibration. This is due on Monday, February 25, 2008.
Devantech SRF04 Sonar Sensor Calibration. This Sonar Ranging Sensor Calibration assignment requires you to calibrate the sonar ranging sensor. It is due on Friday, April 4; one report per team.
Code for Software Timing. The code I wrote for timing code in Interacti-C is timing.ic and may be useful for timing the execution speed of any function or block of code.
Website. Here's a link to the Handy Board website. You might find some useful stuff there...
Assembly. The Handyboard Assembly Manual used to be one of the first things you would need---but we no longer will be building the boards. Even though we'll use assembled boards this might be an interesting reference for you.
Technical Reference. The Technical Reference Manual has lots of information about the Handyboard, including complete schematics (very useful). This manual also has some discussion of motors, sensors (also in our text).
Interactive-C. The Interactive-C Manual is the complete reference for Interactive-C. Note that our text and the "Technical Reference Manual" also have some of this same content.
Schematics. A full set of schematics is available. Again, these are the same as other sources, but here if you want them.
Voltage Regulator Issues. In past years we've had trouble with boards refusing to bootstrap properly. ECE student Carl Raffa determined that a problem was the LM2931 voltage regulator not having enough current drawn to regulate properly. Here is Carl's Voltage Regulator Writeup showing a couple of fixes for the problem. Thanks, Carl.
Motor Driver Chips. Here is the datasheet for the SN754410 H-Bridge Chips. These are made by TI, and 2 of them are used to drive the 4 motor outputs on the Handyboard. This chip can source up to 1A at 36V.
Description. Here is a link to the "handyboard.com" site which describes the Expansion Board. It gives you several more inputs and outputs. Interfacing to the Expansion Board will be discussed in class.
Assembly Manual. Here is the Expansion Board Asssembly Manaul. While not really needed (our Expansion Boards are pre-assembled) it may be a useful reference.
Schematic.. Here is the Expansion Board schematic. It is useful for locating various analog and digital sensor intputs and outpus.
Soldering Tips. This document on soldering tips may be of interest. Much of the material is irrelevant, but some is useful.
Building Tips. LEGO Building Tips has much information about LEGO constructions. In particular, there is some good material in Section 5 on wheel configurations and casters.
QRB1114 Infrared Optical Sensors. Here is the datasheet on the QRB1114 optical sensors that we'll be using to follow the black tape line. These sensors are discussed on pp. 123-124 of our textbook.
Voltage Regulators and the Handyboard. Here is the voltage regulator presentation that Carl Raffa (former ECE Graduate Student) prepared for class during 2007. This was a very important "fix" back when we were building our own boards. Hopefully we won't need it now, but it's still interesting material on voltage regulators.
The SRF04 Sonar Ranging Sensor. This ultrasonic ranging sensor has an approximate range of 3 inches to 10 feet. There are four connections: (1) +5V, (2) GND, (3) a "trigger" logic line (connected to Expansion Board digital output channel 0), and (4) the returned echo (connected to Handyboard digital input 7 (TIC3)). There are actually five plated-through holes on the SRF04; one of them in unused.
Here is a photograph of the SRF04 wiring diagram, showing "wires" drawn from the SRF04 to the Expansion Board/Handyboard. Obviously you will be making up a ribbon cable and typical 3-pin connector for three of the four wires.
Also, here is the little test program I wrote to demo the SRF04 sensor. Note that you have to have the #use "srf04_sonar.ic" directive in your program to include the driver software for the SRF04.
Finally, here is a website with more information, and another website with even more information.
