1/29/2015 Day 12 of Mechatronics

Day 12 of Mechatronics

I had spent all of my time trying to complete the hacked toy. It had just refused to work this whole time. What was wrong? The schematics should work. Was it the battery, hardware, because it wasn't the programming Denny and I found out later. I am falling far behind.

1/28/2015 Day 11 of Mechatronics

Day 11 of Mechatronics

Today all I got done was my buzzer projects, but I spent the majority of my time hacking my toy which was a toy hummer and fully mechanical wound up toys. After trial and error, tinckering and engineering the toy was close to working and instructor Denny was going to took a look at it.

1/22/2015 Day 9 of Mechatronics

Day 9 of Mechatronics

Today I skipped the buzzer lab and went straight into what I remember to be a very important concept in programming (because of prior exposure to programming in C) the if- else statements. I used a TIP 120 transistor which has a different pin set up than the other transistors and after struggling to get the set up to work we (the instructor and I) had given up to make it work then it worked with magic or as my uncle would call it with MFM. Next, I went back to setting up a buzzer to turn on or off when I used a potentiometer at different resistances. Once that was done I set up to buzzer to activate with different ranging sounds for the fun of it and an LED to light up for fun (I didn't know it was a lab). From there I used a photo resistor to activate the buzzer for certain values in my program which came out to be very obnoxious after a lot of trial and error.

1/21/2015 Day 8 of Mechatronics

Day 8 of Mechatronics

Today I used a thermo resistor and a photo resistor to tell the "Arduino" to turn on an LED if the resistance reached a certain level by setting up two separate circuits, one for the LED and one for the particular resistor used. I tried to do the buzzer lab, but ran out of time.

1/20/2015 Day 7 of Mechatronics

Day 7 of Mechatronics

Today, after attempts to recreate the H - bridge set up, I was able to attach the set up to an "Arduino" to program the motor to change rotation every second without burning out the motor or the transistors each are either an NpN (negative posative negative) or a PnP (posative negative posative). This matters if the current will be strong enough to move the motor if the arduino activates or not. Thus, somewhat changing the course of the river we call electricity to turn the motor a certain direction.

2/03/2015 Day 13 of Mechatronics

Day 13 of Mechatronics

Today was my most productive day yet! I was able to learn how to program with the "Arduino" an ultra sonic sensor which uses a form of echolocation to measure the distance from speaker to object. Next, I learned the purpose and use of a phototransistor which measures light in order to act similarly to a photo- resistor but without the resistance. Lastly, I was able construct a flame detecting sensor using a phototransistor and a candle with some new program.

2/04/2015 Day 14 of Mechatronics

Day 14 of Mechatronics

Today I did not get much done. I toyed with my robot and hacked toy most of the class. Then took two attempts to make and program with the "Arduino" a working line sensor that apparently used too many wires. Nevertheless it was in fact sensitive enough to show a dramatic difference between white and black.

2/05/2015 Day 15 of Mechatronics

Day 15 of Mechatronics

Today was very productive seeing that I was able to not only time my robot to complete the maze in a creative fashion, but I also completed the programming through the maze with encoders! The difference is rotation count (encoders) vs. timing how long a motor runs at a certain rate. Out of everyone else I was the only one that used smooth turns since the situation allowed me to do so.

2/10/2015 Day 16 of Mechatronics

Day 16 of Mechatronics

Today was a very difficult day where my only project done was the ultra sonic sensor program, but only to a certain extent since most of the time I was making the sensor wire correctly. The program only got so far, but it wasn't until later where I learned that once in a while the sonar would read -1 in intervals so in my if condition I had to trap the -1 value so the robot would not get confused.

2/11/2015 Day 17 of Mechatronics

Day 17 of Mechatronics

Today I made some significant progress to my robot in which I have not named yet so I call him Bob. Today I redid my line sensor (failed), fire sensor (win), sonar (fixed) and attatched my fan. I finished my sonar programming and I spent the rest of the time learning how to use void functions and getting them just right which is convenient since like a function of f(x) I could just change my "x" instead of redoing the whole program. So far I was able to get it to move through the maze AND find the flame.

2/12/2015 Day 18 of Mechatronics

Day 18 of Mechatronics

Today was the day where Mackrel, my robot, was going to compete with my new approach of finding a flame by searching rooms without going in them. Unfortunately my robot kept bumping into the walls ruining the sonar readings and making the program trippy and unworkable. However, I still believe the approach is still a good one.

1/15/2015 Day 6 of Mechatronics

Day 6 of Mechatronics

Today I was still far behind the class's pace yet I was still learning much with a slow pace. Maybe electronics was a bigger obstacle than anticipated before joining the class. Nevertheless, there was a lot of progress done today as supposed to yesterday.

Set- up 1:

We learned that in order for our motor to run properly in this set up we needed assistance from another power source such as the 1.5 volt battery. It took a long time, but it was preparation so that way when we incorporate the Auduino eventually, we will have a better understanding. Figures 1A and 1B show our set up and a note I took to tell myself which direction of rotation the motor would turn depending on which direction the current was going. 

Figure 1A. Our first set up to run a motor.

Figure 1B. I labeled which direction the motor would turn depending on the direction of flow through the circuit.

Set Up 2:
In this set up I had to do a H- bridge circuit to not only make a motor spin, but with a flip of a switch reverse the direction. There were struggles and small mistakes here and there in which even our instructor had to offer assistance. When nothing went right and the motor wouldn't run, as if by magic, it suddenly began to run. Figure 2 shows what this set up looked like.

Figure 2. Now without using the Auduino I made an H-bridge set up to run the motor and even reverse direction with a switch.

1/14/2015 Day 5 of Mechatronics

Day 5 of Mechatronics

Today was not a very productive day seeing as I was only able to complete one assignment from an earlier day. As this course goes by the struggles I have with understanding and applying everything has brought me to more and more moments of "Ahah!" when things finally click and I finally see what it was I was not able to understand.

Auduino Lab:

In this basic Auduino Lab we had to make an LED not only light up, but flicker. However, since we forgot to take a picture, we unfortunately do not have a picture of the next set up which we had a row of LED's light up in sequence using the C language for the Auduino.

1/13/2015 Day 4 of Mechatronics

Day 4 of Mechatronics

Today we were given an introduction to Auduinos and a basic "how to". We watched a lengthy youtube video and dicussed any questions and final points on the subject. However, since I was behind on labs I did not have time to get to use the Auduinos as of yet. So seen here in figures 1 is the Auduino I intend to use for future labs.

Figure 1. My intended Auduino

Transistor Labs:

Figure 2. Our first transistor set up with a push switch

Since the transistors in our class is not quite enough for everyone to use while anticipating the number of broken transistors as a result of this lab. So for this time we worked with partners. The first of the two labs we simply had to set up a circuit to light an LED with a transistor among the components we had to use as well as a push switch as seen in Fig 2.

Next, we removed the switch to use our finger to complete the circuit since our finger would have enough resistance to maintain the circuit without burning out the transistor as seen in Fig 3.

Figure 3. Same set up but without a push switch and our
fingers were the resistor.

01/07/2015 Day 2 of Mechatronics

Day 2 of Mechatronics

Today was introduction to a multimeter (MM), probes (what attach to the MM), reading schematics and different sensors that control resistance. 

Multimeter:

We learned the uses and settings to a multimeter to measure voltage in both AC and DC, resistance across a current, range and continuity (seeing if a circuit is complete).

Figure 1. Testing the voltage of a D size battery

Figure 2. Measuring resistance across this resistor

Sensors of Different Kinds:

We were introduced to some of the resistance controlling sensors of different kinds ranging from potentiometer (adjustable resistance), force sensitive, light sensitive, heat sensitive and others. We used the MM to measure their difference when put under the conditions they were designed for to see the change in resistance.

Figure 3. Measuring the resistance of a light sensitive sensor.

Figure 4. A force sensitive sensor being measured for resistance.

Basic Schematic:
We then had to use our new knowledge of reading a very very basic schematic to light up an LED on a bread board.

Figure 5. Schematic assignment replicated on breadboard.

01/06/2015 Day 1 of Mechatronics

Day 1 of Mechatronics

Today was our introduction day, not only for the class but how it is structured and what was expected to be done every day. With an initial coverage of the syllabus and a discussion of what materials were required we went head first into our first assignment, soldering.

Soldering:

We initially were assigned to solder random components to a board to get some practice after some basic instruction. With past exposure to soldering and my welding background helped me pick it up relatively quickly which was a nice start to the session.

Figure 1. My board in which I soldered.

Next we had to attach wires to replace the end of an AC adapter so we may use it to connect our bread board as well as our other end we were given. An AC adapter converts what comes out of an outlet (AC) into what the object can use to power (DC). Without the conversion it will simply not work. We cut, stripped and then shrink wrapped our wires and with some trial and error we completed our assignments.

Figure 2. My completed soldered wire of the AC Adapter.

Figure 3. My completed end, crooked but functional.

Our First Circuit:
We were then taught about lighting up our LED's and how voltage is acceptable. With that led to the lesson about resistors to decrease voltage in a current so that the LED will light up isstead of bursting like some did. This took me a little while seeing as I kept mistaking the correct orientation in with we connect the LED's. With that we used my modified AC adapter to power the circuit.

Figure 4. My completed circuit lighting an LED

01/08/2015 Day 3 of Mechatronics

Day 3 of Mechatronics

Today we learned about the basic concept of what a switch , a relay and a capacitor can do as well as why that is. If my understanding is correct a relay is a coil with magnetically sensitive two way switch above that coil so that when there isn't a current running through the coil and one of the two ways of the switch is connected, electricity will flow through that particular circuit without a problem. However, if there in fact is a current running through the coil, the coil would act as a electromagnet (becomes magnetic only if there is a current running through it) which then results to the magnetic sensitive switch inside to relay electricity to the second way. A capacitor acts as a way to store energy then releases it which can be helpful to cause delay for the circuit we were assigned to do.  

 Our Assigned Circuit:

Figure 1. Our assigned set up incorporating our new-found lessons.

Our objective was to set up a circuit that initially has one of two LED lights on and when one pushes on a push switch it will cause the two LED's to switch in a pattern where one will be on when the other is off then vice versa. This was apparently difficult for me since I am still very new to electronics so there were things about the relays that many of us students were not aware of. Since the breadboards were set up in the fashion that they are, it had not occurred to us to place the relay so that no two sides of leads would not be in the same connected row or they will "short".

Squarebot:

After spending most of the class  time on this set up, I spent the rest of my time constructing the "squarebot" to the point where mechanically it is completed and is fully powered and wired I just need to program it.

Figure 2. The construction of the chasis and motor installation of the square bot.

Figure 3. A completed Squarebot with a "brain" and battery pack.