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Emanuel’s Status Report for 2/24

This Week’s Updates:

  • Mandatory Lab (4 hr.)
    • Sat and gave feedback to other team’s design presentation
    • Had to prepare and give our team presentation for our team design
  • Team Meetings (6 hr.)
    • Created a cardboard prototype 
      • Track and test levitation and stability
    • Implemented magnets with the cardboard prototype 
      • Track and test the strength of magnets
    • Adjusted CAD design metrics based on results from cardboard prototype
  • Design Research and Self-Time (2 hr.)
    • Looked into alternative ways to power the nano Arduino
      • Nano needs wireless power since it is moving on the track
    • Soldered battery with wires to the nano
      • Tested for any heating, current/voltage loss, whether the component works
    • Researched ways to decrease the amount of voltage loss when connected to the nano
      • Alternative batteries (Lithium batteries)
      • Implement a switch in between the nano and the battery (most likely solution to go with)

Schedule:

As of now, we are behind schedule. We would have liked to have our track and carrier fully printed out by now, but due to our order request being rejected, we had to create an alternative cardboard prototype for testing. Though we are behind schedule, the cardboard prototype really helped us add and finalize certain details and components for the track and carrier.

Next Week’s Schedule:

  • Fully printed out carrier and track
  • Whole H-Bridge circuitry done (at least one coil)
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Team Status Report for 2/24

Risks:

Stability: We still have some work to do on finalizing the length and other components when it comes to stability, but our whole project focuses on whether the carrier could levitate smoothly while traveling around the track. This poses a huge risk to us and really determines whether or not we can continue making progress on our project, as well as adding a risk to meet our new proposed MVP. When working on the cardboard prototype, we realized that whenever we placed our carrier on the track, the carrier would jump off the track to the side. We kept altering the thicknesses and the length of the sides on the carrier. We looked into increasing the length of the carrier itself which seemed to help out a bit alongside the new lengthened sides. We have also discussed altering the design of the support system on the carrier as well as the actual track itself to allow for more support and canceling any chances of the carrier jumping off as previously stated. If our plans for stability don’t meet our expectations, we can pivot into altering the support portion of the carrier, i.e. having wheels ride along the track instead of lengthened sides.

 

Propulsion: Another risk we can encounter for this project is making sure our H-Bridge and Arduino work perfectly with each other to allow for propulsion across the track. This system affects the speed of the carrier and whether the carrier would be able to move at all. This poses a huge risk because as previously stated, any failures of the H-Bridge or the Arduino could mean that we would only have a levitating carrier but it wouldn’t be able to move. Of course we could simply push the carrier across the track but we want our product to stand out to the existing market, thus making this an even more important task. We can look into buying alternative H-Bridge chips and Arduinos if the ones we have doesn’t function as expected, but overall we could look into pivoting towards a mechanical wheel system which would implement some sort of battery or motor for the carrier.

 

Design Changes:

  • Carrier will be redesigned to have a greater length to help with stability when levitating. With a shorter carrier, there were issues with the carrier rotating on its side and slipping off the track. The carrier’s legs will be thicker and filled in and not hollowed out as shown in the design review presentation, the thicker legs will help with sturdiness as the legs broke after 3D printing. 
  • The track will be redesigned to have grooves where the carrier will contact to ensure greater security when the carrier is moving along the track, and make sure the carrier doesn’t lean awkwardly to one side. 
  • With both design changes, the only cost will be extra time allocated for additional CAD design and the actual 3D printing. Cost is not severe enough for mitigations.

Cardboard prototype with levitation

updated schedule

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Myles’s Status Report for 2/24

Personal Accomplishments:

  • Lab Meetings (4 hrs):
    • Attended section’s Design review presentations and gave constructive feedback
  • Team Meetings (6 hrs):
    • Wrote the design review slides and finalized details for MVP
  • Research (2 hrs):
    • Looked into PWM through Arduino and found scripts to output PWM to the input pins of the h-bridge
    • Worked on a simple LED circuit to showcase PWM and the ability to raise and lower the duty cycle for the LED

Progress:

Behind Schedule – We need to change our CAD design for the carrier and track and have not made as much progress regarding propulsion. This week we worked with a cardboard prototype to see the feasibility of levitation and achieved a levitation of over an inch.  We will be doing the CAD development of the track and carrier in parallel with the H-Bridge circuit.

Next Week Deliverables:

  1. redesign track and carrier with connection grooves for increased stability
  2. Implement PWM for the input pins on the H-Bridge to create the propulsion force
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Angel’s Status Report for 2/24

This Week 

  • Weekly Team Meeting (6hr)
    • Created cardboard prototype of carrier and track to test levitation and strength of magnets
    • Adjusted CAD design metrics to better fit result from cardboard prototype
  • Mandatory Meeting (4hr)
    • Watched design review presentations and provided feedback
  • Independent Work (2hr)
    • Created cardboard prototype of carrier and track to test levitation and strength of magnets
    • Researched different designs of model maglevs to get ideas on how to improve the prototype

Through out this week, I spent time working with the new supplies we received. I developed a cardboard track and carrier with elongated sides (both with magnets) to test the strength of our magnets. The magnets were very strong, which often lead to the carrier flipping over. After the carriers elongated sides were adjusted and the carriers length was extended, levitation of the carrier stabilized at around 1 inch. I plan to adjust the CAD design of our carrier and track to better match these results.

We are currently behind schedule but we plan to adjust our schedule to match our progress

Next Week

In the following week, I hope to print the CAD design of the track and carrier and test its levitation. If all goes well, I plan to work with my teammates to attached the speedup coils and test the propulsion.

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Emanuel’s Status Report for 2/17

This Week’s Updates:

  • Mandatory Lab (4 hr.)
    • Met with TA and Professor to discuss feedback from presentation 
    • Established a new definition for our MVP
  • Team Meetings (4 hr.)
    • Completed the design for our carrier, adding finishing touches to track
    • Made decisions to change certain components 
      • Magnetometer instead of RFID
      • Ultrasonic Sensor instead of LiDAR Sensor
      • H-Bridge instead of Digital Potentiometer
    • Worked with team members on the Design slides for presentation
  • Design Research (4 hr.)
    • Read data sheets provided with new components about any recommendations
      • Voltage and Current
      • Potential safety components, e.g. Flyback Diodes
    • Assisted in researching the new components
      • Magnetometer
      • H-Bridge Chip
      • Ultrasonic Sensor

Schedule:

As of now we are behind schedule because of the drastic changes that we had to make to our project after talking to the TA and Professor. We had to make the decisions of changing multiple components to our designs such as changing from digital potentiometer to an H-Bridge, from LiDAR to Ultrasonic Sensor, and from RFID system to Magnetometer. With such changes to our design, we had to invest a lot of time into researching these components, as well as creating new ways to smoothly insert these newer components to the ones we are deciding to continue with. We wanted to finish all the 3D printing for the track and the carrier but we were not able to since we haven’t bought any filament for the 3D printer. 

Next Week’s Updates:

  • Have a finished and 3D printed carrier and track, at least so we can get to MVP territory 
  • Buy all the components we would need in order to work on MVP
  • Have circuits ready to implement the power system
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Team Status Report for 2/17

Risks:

The main risk with our project is that we aren’t able to get our Arduino integrated duty cycle for the voltage to vary the current in the speed coils. This would mainly affect the propulsion system. In the case we can’t get the magnetic propulsion system functional we would pivot to a mechanical wheel system and have some type of battery or motor for the carrier. Achieving levitation and stability with levitation as well is a risk. To mitigate this risk we have designed our carrier with elongated sides to slightly contact the track to make sure it does not fall off. 

Design Changes:

  • Lidar to Ultrasonic Sensor with Blockage system
  • Digital Potentiometer to H-Bridge with speed up coil
  • Straight-Away track for MVP 

Schedule Changes:

  • Push back when we design speed up coils
  • Push back prototype 2
  • Since we are no longer using the lidar sensor, we have freed parts of our schedule. Therefore, we have time to push back parts of our schedule

A was written by Angel Nyaga, B was written by Emanuel Abiye and C was written by Myles Mwathe.

Part A:

Given that our product involves a user interface, there is good reason to consider what safety mechanisms the product has. This product is intended to have the user have as little interaction with the circuit as possible. To get the train to move, a button, separate from the main circuit is pressed. This little interaction protects the user from the possibility of being hurt by components of the circuit. 

Additionally, magnetic fields are often associated with negative health effects. This is only true when someone is in contact with a high amounts of magnetic fields. Since our system is small, a small amount of current is required to power the system. This means a small magnetic field is produced, meaning the user is not in danger.

Lastly, we want to advise people with magnetic or conducting materials to steer clear of the product. Given that our system is dependent on magnetism, there is a high possibility a conducting or magnetic component can interfere with the system without our control. This interference could result in damage to the product and harm to anyone near the product. For this reason, we would put up a visual disclaimer to anyone approaching the product with conducting and magnetic material.

Part B:

Our project aims to target train enthusiasts and those interested in Maglev Trains and would like to learn more about them. Our product offers an interactive learning experience for both kinds of users. For enthusiasts, we wanted to make sure that our product mirrored real life Maglev Trains and their functionality, with such components being the levitation and wanted to ensure authenticity to our product that can stand out to similar products. With the overall quality gap we plan on having compared to current MagLev model train sets, we believe that we can successfully cater to such users. And with such a gap mentioned before, train enthusiasts would be fine with our proposed cost for our product. For those that primarily would want to learn more about MagLev Trains, we are allowing our product to take in user input, allowing users to experiment with how MagLev trains would respond to such inputs. With examples such as affecting the speed, or having a carrier move from one stop to the next, or manipulating the current throughout the track, we want these users to learn how the MagLev carriers react to these changes, and have these reactions be as accurate as possible to an actual MagLev train. Again, with how wide we expect the gap to be compared to current MagLev model train sets, we believe that the cost accurately represents the wide variety of experiments and knowledge the user can learn from our product, and would be fine with the proposed cost. Overall, we are hoping to have a mutual appreciation of MagLev trains from both kinds of users, and possibly allow train enthusiasts to become the kind of user that would want to learn more about MagLev trains, and allow those that want to learn more about MagLev trains become train enthusiasts themselves.

Part C:

We are mindful of the current model maglev trains on the market and their prices currently. The most functional maglev train set that allows for propulsion goes for around $450. Some simpler models cost less but don’t have propulsion systems beyond the user pushing the train along the track manually. Some maglev model trains require materials like liquid nitrogen which may be expensive and hard to obtain for the average user of our product. 

Given that our budget for the project as a whole is $600 and that most of the components of our MVP are relatively inexpensive, staying below a price of $450 should be relatively easy. Since we are pivoting our design to use ultrasonic sensors and magnetometers instead of a LiDAR system, we not only simplify the complexity of implementation but the overall cost of our project as well. The magnets we would be using for the product are also relatively inexpensive given that the load of our carrier won’t be heavy enough to justify having to use stronger, more costly magnets. We aim to make our product accessible to people who want to learn about electromagnetics and the average train hobbyist so we don’t want there to the price point of the product to be an accessibility limiter for users. When our process becomes optimized for production we should be able to cut the costs of the product even further since we wouldn’t be doing prototyping and experimentation. 





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Angel’s Status Report for 2/17

  • Weekly Team Meeting (4hr)
    • Researched different ways to implement our speed up coils. Leaning toward the H-Bridge Design
    • Researched different ways to implement our stop, start, and speed system. Considering creating a system centered around a magnetometer
    • Finalized details of initial track and carrier design
  • Mandatory Meeting (4hr)
    • Discussed feedback relating to our start-stop system and how we want to go about stopping the train if blocked
    • Further developed our track and carrier design
  • Design  Preparation (4hr)
    • Collaborated with team to finalize details of our design review
    • Discussed deliverables we wanted to meet throughout the project

Through out this week, my team spent time going over feedback we received from the proposal and discussed changes we could make. This result in all of us doing research on ultrasonic sensors as an alternative to LIDAR sensors. We have decided to move forward with this decision. Also, my team started considering simpler ways to implement the speed up coils. Following the feedback we received from the instructor, we decided to use the H-Bridge system due to it having many of our desired needs (such as protection from high-voltages with a fullback diode) built in.

We have finalized the designs for our carrier and track. Our carrier is designed to be light weight but able to hold the ultrasonic sensor, magnetometer, and three magnets . Our track is currently oval shaped and 450 cm across. We plan to develop a straight track for testing and our MVP.

Given that we haven’t started building the “speed-up” coils, we are behind schedule. We plan to order the parts for this component this week so we can start the build process. We also plan on updating our schedule.

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Myles’s Status Report for 2/17

 

Personal Accomplishments:

  • Lab Meetings (4 hrs):
    • Discussed with TA and Professor the details of the proposal and cleared up design choices for MVP
  • Team Meetings (4 hrs):
    • Worked on Design Review Slides and updating gant chart with updated tasks because of tweaked design for MVP
    • Decided to move away from RFID sensors and digital potentiometer.
    • Finished CAD prototype for carrier
  • Research (4 hrs):
    • Researched H-Bridges, magnetometers, and ultrasonic sensors as alternatives for our proposal design.

Progress:

Behind Schedule – The schedule will be updated to reflect setbacks. We should have progressed with the coil circuitry this week but we needed to refine our design to meet our use case requirements. We initially were not sure about how we were going to implement obstacle detection and had mentioned LIDAR sensors in our presentation we decided to go with an ultrasonic sensor to make things simpler. We also decided not to use an RFID configuration to gauge user input as this was clunky and generally not what RFIDs are used for.

Next Week Deliverables:

    1.  Finish track CAD prototype
    2. Order magnets, sensors, 3D filament
    3. Start coil circuit try and Arduino voltage input
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Emanuel’s Status Report for 2/10

This Week’s Updates

  • Mandatory Lab (4 hr.)
    • Attended the mandatory labs, watched peer’s presentations and provided feedback
  • Working on Presentation Slides (4 hr.)
    • Worked with teammates to complete the slides for presentations
  • Team Meetings (4 hr.)
    • Met with teammates outside of in class hours
    • Worked on components to buy
    • Worked on track design
    • Watched videos to compare different circuit designs

Schedule

I am on schedule according to our proposed schedule. I am scheduled  to be focusing heavily on the 3D Printing components first which I have been accounting for.

Next Week’s Updates

  • Getting Prototype 1 materials
    • 3D Filament
    • Wires, resistors, digital potentiometer
  • Finishing up our proposed designed track
    • Finalizing the design, using filament to start printing
  • Research alternative power circuit methods
    • Some including digital potentiometer
    • H-Bridges

 

 

 

 

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Team Status Report 2/10

Team Status Report for February 10, 2024

Risks

  • Levitation not working. 
    • We have a backup system with mechanical wheels. We will test the levitation system early on to make sure it’s sufficient 
  • Things ordered don’t show up on time
    • Working in slack time into the schedule. 
  • Integration not working out. 
    • Prioritize levitation and propulsion and work with the functional components. 
  • Speed and Slow not Implemented. 
    • Try different methods to implement speed-up/slow-down, we’ll look into different tracks and circuit designs. 
  • RFID stops not functional. 
    • We’ll make sure the train does a complete loop around the track which can be triggered by the user. 

Design Changes

The LiDAR may be changed to an ultrasonic sensor or something lighter and simpler. The LiDAR may be too complicated for our needs. 

Schedule Changes

In the future, we will try to make it more clear that our tasks are parallel.