Author: jcortes

This week I continued to improve the parameters for the gantry movement. We now are able to return to our home position after each move. I also worked with Luis to establish the communication protocols between the OpenCV and the Arduino. The OpenCV now sends the commands it detects causing the Arduino to execute them. Upon execution the Arduino sends an ACK signal to the Pi indicating the move has been completed.

During the last two days I am working on precision and finalize the communication with the Web Server and Arduino.

This week we have been working to finalize the subsystems to improve overall accuracy and functionality. This week we are working together to ensure that the subsystems are transmitting data properly between one another, so that it is ready for the demo.

This week I have been working on modifying the input logic for the whole gantry movement. Movement has changed from number of squares and direction to move to taking into square positions in order to improve integration of subsystems.

I have also been improving precision by fine tuning parameters for our board and pieces. This week I will be working to finalize the communication between the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino.

This week I worked on the Arduino control code. Through the Arduino’s serial monitor we are able to input different commands to control our X-Y movement, our elevator and the claw movements. All of these can be controlled in sequence by inputting their respective commands and a number of squares to move in the desired direction.

This coming week I will be working on tuning parameters to improve precision and work on communication between the subsystems.

This week we worked on attaching the rest of the gantry parts. In the pictures below you can see the gantry on its stands. On the top is the Raspberry Pi and camera. We had been having issues with weight distribution, but Lilies stands and mounts resolved it. Aside from this we have been testing our gripper mechanism along with the Z-axis but we did not take a picture before leaving and will show it during the demo instead. Interfacing between subsystems has improved as we are sending the data between Pi, Arduino and Webserver. We will continue to work on the interfacing in this week.

This week I worked on the control of the gantry and the website. As for gantry control I am able to move to every square using the Universal Gcode Sender. As I mentioned before this serves more as a testing platform as we need to continuously stream commands from our Raspberry Pi to the Arduino.  To do this I have been making an Arduino script that uses the AccelStepper and MultiStepper libraries to control the motors to desired locations. Currently It is moving to fixed locations as we are testing the Z mechanism with the X-Y now.

For the website I have used the chess.js library to implement a full chess game. Currently the same user has to do both moves, but only legal moves are allowed. Moves are logged in actual chess notation and the previous move is shown. The previous move is the output that we would the Pi would use to determine what the next stepper input should be. The FEN is the literal string that the chessboard.js uses to display the board position and is being used as a debugging tool.

This week I will be further developing the Arduino code so that we can fully control the gantry positioning through the serial stream. I will also be working on improving the website interface and user experience.

This week the team worked in Tec spark to test motor control on the gantry. Also the Z-Axis mechanism has been assembled and attached to the gantry and is being tested. This coming week we will be attaching the Z-axis to the rest of the gantry and testing combined movement for stability and accuracy. We will also be further developing the interfacing between the Pi and webserver.

This week I have worked on interfacing and programming the stepper motors for the gantry. We are now able to send commands to our motors through GRBL gcode using the Universal Gcode Sender. This serves as a testing platform to ensure that we can move our motors to the desired locations. There were issues with some of our hardware but after debugging I found that the issue was that one of the driver potentiometers was damaged.

This week I will be finding the gcode commands needed for each square position as well as begin developing a way to continuously send gcode to the CNC shield.

This week I focused on the design of the gantry. I worked mainly on the design of the new gripper along with Lillie. A servo-controlled claw that is attached to a stepper motor controlled elevating platform. The claw has foam attached to the its ends to add grip. This approach was chosen because of the size constraints we have when picking up pieces. The claw itself has an initial opening of 45 mm to accommodate the 10 mm of foam on each side of the claw.

Above is a CAD model of the gripper plate that attaching to the Y-Axis end of the gantry. Below is the design concept of the full Z-axis system.

This week I will be building our Z-Axis motion and begin programming our X-Y stepper controls.

This week I worked on improving the OpenCV code. We can now track the lines from the previous code version. I also helped redesign the gripper mechanism to address stability concerns we were having. I did not work on the direct assembly of the gantry this week because we had a delay in our 3D printing. This week I will help assemble the gantry and work on square and piece detection.