Team 04: Taha Tareen, Jamie Jacobs, Stephen Garrett, Woodard Williams,

Allen Eyler, Robert Morris, Carl Coppola, Eric Jackson.

Progress Report II

Woodard, working alongside Jamie, has recently completed the updated version of the printed circuit board design (PCB) using PCBExpress. He is, in addition, familiarizing himself with the connections of each component with respect to the newly designed PCB. A few of the components to be utilized in the circuit are either very minute or require reflow soldering, both of which will make soldering complex. Consequently, Woodard is seeking out companies and alternative methods of soldering, i.e. reflow soldering, to help ensure that the circuit will work properly. Together with Stephen and Taha, Woodard will begin assisting in the Xbee wireless component of the project. Currently, the signal of the wireless component is very weak, so he plans to help resolve this issue. Lastly, Woodard is continuing to support other team members with their delegated tasks, as well as consulting with the entire team in order to ensure that the delegated project components function both independently and collectively.

Robert has been working on finalizing the body design and making appropriate changes to account for available machining methods and the inclusion of rubber o-ring seals. In addition, he has been one of the people machining the final pieces for the body and, together with Eric and Allen, has completed the machining of one of the initial head designs using an UHMWPE plastic rod. Over the next few weeks, he will be working on machining the final parts needed for the fish body, as well as manufacturing testing various shapes for the caudal fin to find an optimal shape for the desired thrust and efficiency.

Jamie has been working on several parts of the project since the last progress report. Firstly, in order to ensure that the HAB sensor programming was completed, Jamie worked on the code for analog to digital conversion with the HAB sensor. Once this was operational, she joined in with Carl to finish coding for the analog to digital conversion of the multiple IR sensors. Jamie and Carl were then able to edit a file from the original fish and get the analog to digital conversion to work for four of our analog devices at the same time. A demo was completed to model the three infrared sensors and the HAB sensor simultaneously converting. Once the XBee communication and the GUI have been edited the team should be able to get an entire demo of all of the editions to the fish on the protoboard. Jamie has also been working on the PCB design with Woodard. The final placement decisions were made but traces have not yet been drawn. Jamie has almost finished the schematic layout using ExpressSCH. When this schematic is complete it will show all the module connections. It will also be linked to the PCB, which will allow the program to cross check all the circuitry and connections. Jamie will have completed the schematic drawing by Monday, and is hoping to have the PCB design finished and ordered by Wednesday April 15th.

Carl has been working almost exclusively on understanding the coding language, header-files, register address bit states, timing schemes, and sampling process of the A/D-Conversion coding for the analog components of the DSC, as well as learning how to operate the compiler via the ISCP interface. Before being joined by Jamie, Carl had edited a portion of simplistic code copied from a reference manual and edited for, but not yet fully compatible with, the HAB sensor, and altered it so that it would work with a pin other than the one intended for the HAB. Once Jamie joined, testing was conducted and both Carl and Jamie worked to alter to code so that it finally worked. Once the code for the single IR module was completed and functioning properly, both Carl and Jamie began working on altering the code to incorporate sampling of multiple analog inputs, initially with two IR modules. At first, Carl, and subsequently Jamie, spent two or three days trying to incorporate code from the reference manual that would allow for simultaneous sampling of all analog inputs. However, unbeknownst to either, the 12-bit ADC of the current DSC does not have that ability, unlike the 10-bit ADC DSCs. After discovering this, Carl came up with multiple other coding schemes to sequentially sample all the channels, but did not test his last idea. Jamie tried this last idea and found out that it worked almost perfectly for two, three, and even four analog inputs, with only minor coding change to deal with sampling resolutions and timing. In spite of working so rigorously on the coding with Jamie, Carl has not stopped doing mechanical design, but has been offering alternative ideas on machining, manufacturing, mechanical and electrical component integration of the fish, and has been talking with John Thon regarding the physical and electrical requirements for, as well as methods for integrating and manufacturing the IPMC tail clamp. He has come up with a few design possibilities that John mentioned he thought were easy to make and showed definite promise of working well. Altogether, Carl has further cemented his status in Group 09 as the “Ideas-Guy” reigning champ for body design and, more recently, the DSC coding.

Taha has been aiding in the hardware and software integration of the HAB Sensor. Aftercreating one version of coding for the HAB sensor and testing it on the board with just the DSC circuit, Taha has been working with Stephen on the wireless integration of the Xbee wireless module. He has successfully compiled the GUI and the MPLAB code and is currently in the process of trying to figure out how to display the A/D-converted values of the HAB sensor transmittedfrom the DSC in the main GUI terminal. He has already physically set one proposed protoboard connection scheme for the wireless communication of the base station and the microcontroller, but still needs to test the functionality of and communication between both components.

Stephen has accomplished several of his goals regarding updating the C-code of the G3 robotic fish and interfacing a digital servo with the device. Stephen updated the previous C-code so that it would compile and be available for use in the new robotic fish. Next, Stephen developed his own program to test and implement a digital servo with the microcontroller. The testing is currently in the video section of design team 4’s website. Also, a demonstration of the rotating servo was given in the group’s weekly meeting with the facilitator. Based on what he learned from the servo aspect of the project, Stephen wrote an application note on digital servo integration with step-by-step details and example C-code. Furthermore, Stephen worked with Taha Tareen on implementation of a wireless communication device in the robotic fish. Progress has also been made on establishing a user friendly graphical user interface (GUI). In addition to the above, Stephen has taken on the responsibility of being the coordinator of system integration with the mechanical engineers. The next steps for Stephen include integrating the servo code with main code for the robotic fish, working with Taha to get the HAB sensor data to transmit from the DSC to the GUI using wireless communication, and continuing to develop and update the team website.

04/10/2009