This week I made and finalized the parts list and wrote up all of the necessary information for submitting the purchase requests. Choosing the particular motors was very important as we had to take into account the current limitations on the Adafruit Motor Shield V2. I will formally submit the requests before the end of class on Monday to ensure we can get our parts ordered in the Tuesday batch. I also assisted Thomas in designing the enclosure and fleshing out the card dealing system. I did research on controlling the stepper and servo motors using the motor shield: https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/downloads/pdf/adafruit-motor-shield-v2-for-arduino.pdf.
I also powered on the RPI 5 and determined that 5V 5A can be supplied through the GPIO pins. This allowed us to finalize the power delivery system to the RPI 5 using a buck convertor to step down 12V DC from the battery to 5V 5A dc output, instead of using a separate power supply which would have required a slip ring in our design.
I am currently on track, and once we get parts delivered, I will be able to start implementing motor drivers and calibrating the movement as well as getting images using the RPI 5 and raspberry pi cameras. I am most heavily prioritizing getting motors power on so we can test if our gear system for rotating our platform is sufficient as well as estimate battery life.