Spring 2017 Week 15

This week consisted mostly of presentation work since the final presentation is going to be on Friday. Therefore, most of the week was spent preparing so that the final presentation can go as smooth as possible.

Besides the presentation, there is still not much for my team and I to do regarding the project itself since the rest of the project involves working on the mobile application. Therefore, my team and I are there to simply provide assistance and support to the mobile application team. As the semester is coming to an end, everyone is just trying to finish up the project in time for Maker Faire. Fortunately, I am not too worried about whether or not we are going to finish the project in time because I believe the mobile application team is doing pretty good in terms of progress.

Spring 2017 Week 14

This week did not really consist of any work on my team's part since the rest of the project falls upon the Mobile App team. Therefore, my team and I were only there to provide assistance. However, my team and I have decided to implement the second ultrasonic sensor in order to eliminate all cases of collision that may occur on the track. In addition, the Mobile App team have begun testing their software with the bogie on the track and it has been working as intended for the most part. As such, the project is basically almost ready for Maker Faire.

Spring 2017 Week 13

This week, I was assigned the task of testing out a second ultrasonic sensor on the pod car. During the Paseo Prototyping Challenge and Festival, there were instances where two pod cars would approach a merging point on the track and collide. Therefore, the team agreed that a second ultrasonic sensor would be necessary to avoid such instances. 

Initially, I had some trouble integrating the second ultrasonic sensor due to some complications within the code. Fortunately, I figured it out and integrated the second ultrasonic sensor such that it works exactly the same as the initial ultrasonic sensor. Now that I know that integrating an extra ultrasonic sensor is not a problem, the next step is to figure out how to utilize and position it. Once that is established, more testing can be conducted on the track with the new sensor. 

Spring 2017 Week 12

This week, I worked on organizing the code and creating header files for the functions at the request of the software team. The software team requested help from Luis and I in order to organize the code in camelCase such that the code can be easily read and deciphered even after the academic year is over. In addition, the software team requested that we help them create header files for each function in order to simplify the code and make it even easier to read. In other words, this week was focused on organization and simplification of the Arduino code so that it can be easily decipherable for both us and the future teams to come.

Rather than coding, there is not much left for my team and I to do now since a majority of the coding falls on the software team. Therefore, we are essentially taking on a support role until the project is finished. Fortunately, the project is almost done so I am confident that we will be able to finish by Maker Faire.

Spring 2017 Week 11

This week, the team was able to test the pod cars on the track one final time before the Paseo Prototyping Challenge and Festival. Fortunately, the pod cars were able to travel around the track with minimal binding. However, we were unsuccessful at getting the pod cars to run with the phone application. Therefore, for the showcase at Paseo Prototyping Challenge and Festival, the pod cars were hard coded to specific routes in order to give a demo of the project. Although the pod cars did not have all the functions that we wanted, they still worked. Therefore, by Maker Faire, I hope to have all the pod cars working simultaneously with the phone application.

Spring 2017 Week 10

This week, I met up with Chris, Luis, and the rest of the 1/12th scale sub teams on Friday in order to get more testing done. Fortunately, the software team and my team were finally able to get the pod car running on the track. However, there were many tight spots within the track where the pod car would significantly slow down or get stuck. Unfortunately, the track team had left the shop before we were able to identify any problems with the track. Therefore, more testing needs to be conducted before this Friday. As such, the team is fairly behind, but I am confident we will be able to get it finished by the Paseo Public Prototyping Challenge and Festival.

Spring 2017 Week 9

This week is spring break so my team and I decided to meet up our own accord so that we could make more progress on the project, if not finish it. So far, we have met this past Sunday in order to see if we could test anything on the track. Unfortunately, the track improvement team had disassembled the track in order to make some fixes. As a result, my team was not able to get much done as our next steps are testing, but we are unable to test so long as the track is not ready. We plan to meet up on Friday and Saturday and the track should be ready by then so hopefully my team and I will be able to finally have something running on the track for testing.