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Qiaoan’s Status Report for 02/18/2023

  1. Prepare for the design presentation. Talk about the presentation detail and the design content we need  to show during the presentation, especially the content about the control flow of our project and how we can connect them together.
  2. Look into the possible ways to make the shell of our product. In last week’s report we have several designs we can download from the internet. Since the 3D printing part is not part of the ECE field, I’m thinking if we still need to create the 3D model on draft. However buttom layout and display screen may need us to come up with a customized frame.
  3. Keep searching gyroscope for design. Based on the previous conversation on Monday’s class, I think we need a better gyroscope for our project. I think https://www.amazon.com/%E3%80%90WT901C-232-Inclinometer%E3%80%91High-Stability-Acceleration-Sensor%E3%80%90Kalman-Filtering%E3%80%91/dp/B07YYTD9GR/ref=sr_1_5?crid=2UVVQ2ZH50JXH&keywords=easy+gyroscope+sensor&qid=1676779998&sprefix=easy+gyroscope+sensor%2Caps%2C72&sr=8-5 may satisfy our design spec. I will discuss this with my team when finishing the design.

Generally speaking, I think I have choices for my design, but I still need to talk with my team.

I think ECE courses that will cover my design is 18-290 Signal & Systems and 18-370 Fundamentals of Control. 18-794 Pattern Recognition may also help me recognize the accurate steering motions.

 

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Xiao’s Weekly Status Update 02/18/2023

This week has been mostly focused on researching components we can use in our design. During the conversation with Professor Mukherjee and our TA Alex, it became very clear that we need to lay out every single detail we can think of in our design, and it will make our work much easier down the line.

I made some design choices:

  1. Buttons will be wired into a matrix, with diodes to achieve “N-key rollover”.
  2. Screen will be HDMI to avoid the use of GPIO pins. The smallest size HDMI screen for Pi from a good vendor is 5 inches. https://www.adafruit.com/product/2232
  3. Buttons will be an assortment of these in different colors. https://www.adafruit.com/product/1504
  4. Adafruit’s TDK InvenSense ICM-20948 9-DoF IMU is an ideal candidate for us. https://www.adafruit.com/product/4554
  5. https://www.adafruit.com/product/4133 This potentiometer is a good candidate for our analog inputs
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Team Status Report for 02/11/2023

The most important risk now is not certain whether a task can be finished or not by each team member since everything is pretty abstract now. We are actively communicating ideas in our chat group and after each class, following the Gantt chart we created during the proposal.

After the proposal presentation, we realized certain things our team lacked. In our design, we agreed to include more details including diagrams and hardware specifications in our presentations. We also realized that our solution approach section in the presentation should be more related to how the entire system is structured rather than solutions to a few technical challenges. In the use case explanations, we realized that we focused too much on an engineer’s perspective rather than a real user’s perspective. In the next discussion on creating design presentations, we are going to modify our use case requirements.

We also need to figure out how those components we mentioned there will interact with each other, speficially, what kind of data should be transmitted from one part to another part, and what should each part act in different scenarios.  The team is discussing a flow chart to clarify this and we think we will present a flow chart for design presentation.

Since the team is still working on the initial design, we don’t have much update available. We believe our progress are on schedule and no update is needed.

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Qiaoan’s Status Report for 02/11/2023

Week 2/5 – 2/11:

  1. Prepare for the proposal presentation.
  2. Build my 3D printer for future prototyping. Learn how to use Fusion360 to create 3D models and Ultimaker Cura to control the 3D printer. Successfully print a test file to make sure the printer is ready for future prototyping.
  3. Search about possible gyroscope options available for purchase. One possible option is LSM6DSR from ST Microelectronics. It fits our requirements based on the info I find. There are many other gyro modules for sale on Internet, and I think gyros around $10 should be good enough for our project if we want to use cheap as an advantage for our solution.
  4. When designing the steering wheel, I prefer to set around 11 inches wide and 6 inches height. Also about less than 2 inches wide thickness if that’s enough for microcontrollers and battery.
  5. I think I’m on schedule. Next week will be focusing on the design of the steering wheel. I think I will come up with a draft for it together with Xiao. I will also order a gyroscope and look into its manual to see how it works.
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Yuxuan’s Status Report for 02/11/2023

This week I’ve been mostly exploring the software design ideas related to how the game should interact with the controllers. I looked into the API which is developed by the game BeamNG.drive on this repo. The examples and features are mostly related to setting up a car driving environment by using the library function calls to set up a simulator on a PC.  For example, the user can specify the car brand to be Honda and the location to be west coast by calling related APIs This is quite different from what we initially thought since we are designing a program that sends input data to a PC.

Then, the focus is shifted towards firmware on hardware that can read inputs from hardware and send the data to the PC. The game itself should interpret the control data sent by the controller.  I found this repo which is a firmware that can act as a game controller using Raspberry Pi Pico and send data via USB.  I’m planning to dive into code and explore their design ideas in order to gain a better idea of how hardware and game interact via firmware for my following research. Currently, I’m on schedule.

 

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Xiao’s Weekly Status Update 02/11/2023

  1. Researched existing enthusiast level DIY gaming steering wheels. There are a lot of 3D printed open source designs that we can borrow ideas from. There are also a lot of existing button layouts we can learn from. Researched feasibility of adding analog joysticks to Arduino for control. Researched components needed for an LCD screen to work with Arduino/Raspberry Pi.
    1. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4058270
    2. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3400357
    3. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2980569
    4. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4668185
    5. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2762839
    6. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5173152
    7. https://www.instructables.com/Create-a-Joystick-Using-the-Arduino-Joystick-Libra/
  2. So far I am on schedule.
  3. I will have the first version of components to purchase ready next week.
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Introduction and Project Summary

Our project aims to build a portable mobile steering wheel for racing games and simulators. The current designs of racing steering wheels are usually based on a fixed structure and replies on cable connection. We want our design to be wireless and movable so the user can play with our steering anytime at any place. The user should be able to use our product to drive the car in the racing game like it’s a real steering wheel.