Posted on

Juan’s Status Report for 03/27/21

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.

Posted on

Team Status Report 03/27/2021

This week our team worked in techspark to combine different 3d printed components of our design. We’ve modified our Z-Axis gripper system yet again as we believe our previous four-bar linkage to be insufficient.

This upcoming week we plan to begin incorporating different systems from our design such as the raspberryPi, and the webserver, and ideally our gantry, so we can begin testing how our systems interact together, and hone in on proper parameters and settings for a functional overall device

Posted on

Luis’ Status Report for 03/27/2021

This week I focused on working on the OpenCV design. I’ve added a HoughCircles algorithm to add tracking to the pieces. I’ve begun testing the OpenCV algorithm, and testing with the board and a few pieces. Over the next week I plan to hone in on the ideal parameters for these functions, and begin coordinating the output into something which our webserver and arduino can use for piece movement and board status updates.

After figuring out the ideal way to run our OpenCV I plan to work on incorporating this with our webserver, before combining it with our gantry.

Posted on

Lillie’s Status Report for 03/27/2021

This week I worked on assembling the gantry and made some progress on the web client interface. The user can now interact with the web client interface by moving pieces with the mouse.

I have mostly put together the main components of the gantry system. The picture below shows the stepper motors and timing belt attached to the gantry. The opening closest to the excess timing belt is where the gripper will be attached and the timing belt will be held taught here. The timing belt is fed through the blue clamshell housing, and this housing is what facilitates the x-y movement of the gripper.

This week I will work on finishing the gripper prototyping and testing it out with chess pieces. I will also work on sending GET and POST requests between the web application and Raspberry Pi. I ran into some issues with the initial 4 bar linkage gripper design, so Juan and I worked together to design a new mechanism that will use guide rails and a stepper motor to facilitate z-movement of the gripper. The gripper will be attached to an acrylic plate that will be moved up and down using a stepper motor and some nylon cord and will be guided by the guide rails. A microserver will control the opening/closing of the gripper.

Posted on

Luis’ Status Report for 03/13/2021

Due to delays in 3D printing I have not been able to work on any testing with the printed components. Instead I’ve worked on the Design Review Report. I’ve also begun setting up our RaspberryPi environment.

This upcoming week I hope to have printed components to test with, and help setting up the gantry system. I’ll finish up my work on the Design Review Report. I also anticipate that the camera for the RaspberryPi might not fit well within the case that it currently has, and so might have to work on designing a new case that takes that into account.

Posted on

Lillie’s Status Report for 03/13/2021

This week I presented our design review presentation and have been working on refining the gripper mechanism after considering feedback from my presentation. This week I plan to prototype most of the parts we need and start assembling the gantry system. I am hoping to design the gripper using a four bar linkage mechanism such that we don’t have to use an extra servo for z motion but rather the gripper itself lowers as it is closing and raises above all the pieces when it is open.

Posted on

Team Status Report for 03/13/2021

We think our biggest challenge is going to be figuring out how to implement the gripper mechanism. We have been having trouble getting access to TechSpark to 3D print our parts.

We have been working on the formal design report and brainstorming different ways to implement the gripper mechanism. We will begin assembling the gantry system this week and prototyping parts.

Posted on

Juan’s Status Report for 03/13/2021

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.

Posted on

Luis ‘ Status Report for 03/06/2021

This week I continued some work testing OpenCV, and getting comfortable with the library. I spent time with the team to finish developing our Bill of Materials, and worked on the Design Review Slides and Report. Additionally, I spent time in the beginning of the week setting up OpenCV on one of the RaspberryPis for future testing.

This upcoming week, I plan on taking our word doc version of our Design Review Report, and translating it to Latex. I also plan on testing our OpenCV implementation for edge detection with the printed chess pieces when they are available. I also want to begin working on setting up the RaspberryPi and testing its connections with our web interface.

Posted on

Team Status Report for 03/06/2021

Something that could jeopardize our progress this week is how long our 3D printing takes, as we do need to 3D print custom pieces for the gantry. We are mitigate these risks by building the non 3D printed components.

This week the team worked the Design Presentation, website, CAD models, gantry design, edge detection, and setting up OpenCV on the Raspberry Pi.