Category: Cole’s Status Reports

This week I started making the box that will hold all the components for our robot. I could not find a free version with shelves so I had to CAD those myself. The idea is that we can organize the components so that the things that are seperate systems from interfering with each other.

I also helped to start decouple the machine-soldered pins on the motor driver so that we can make the connections permanent as we start to finalize the robot.

This coming week I will start to solder the boards that connect the lipos that will power the electronics and the robot itself.  I will also be adding the heat shielding where we can to minimize damage to the lipos.

 

This week I helped to complete the robot construction. Using the L298N motor controllers we used the GPIO Pins on the Raspberry Ri to drive the four motors. Our end goal is to have the computer vision model talking to the functions we wrote to go forward, backward, left, and right, but at the moment we used keyboard inputs to decide which way the robot was driving

 

This week I also helped to construct the preliminary collimator that will be used to conduct our first successful fire test. This was a great success and worked better than we could have hoped it would.

 

This coming week I will be measuring the chassis we ordered to get a 3D model so we can start building a housing unit and a mount for the speaker.

This week I had the joy of completing the ethics assignment. I learned a whole lot about how fire extinguishers are probably good for the public health. I also did some deep reflecting on how a user might misuse our product by lighting their ear on fire and sticking the device very close to it.

This week I also connected the motor drivers to the encoders that come with the kit. The starter code may need to be edited further than I originally thought but it should be a fairly easy workaround.

 

This week I helped as our group completed a large portion of the requirements of our MVP.

I helped to successfully write code for our ESP32 microcontroller DAC to generate the 60Hz sine wave. This was not only verified on input to the Amplifier using the oscilloscope and it was verified on the output of the Amplifier to ensure that the 60Hz wave was unmodulated.

I also helped to attach and the speaker to the Amplifier and verify that we could produce a sound. The speaker was not able to put out a fire but this was to be expected as we need a column to focus the sound waves in order to extinguish a fire.

I also helped to assemble the robot chassis that finally came in. While the it has not been tested it certainly will be this coming week.

I also helped to write the Design Report we had due friday helping to organize figures and write our testing plans for various parts of our project.

This week I plan to test the robot to make sure we can accurately drive it in the directions we need. The goal by the end of the week is to make the chassis able to integrate with the Raspberry Pi.

This week I reviewed design presentations and helped to work on ours.

After receiving parts and creating the design presentation I was able to start conceptualizing the size, material, and general design of the housing that will hold LiPo batteries and the Raspberry Pi. At the moment the box will be laser cut out of wood with the interior and exterior in aluminum foil to keep the internal temperature steady while preventing the proximity to the fire from increasing the internal temperature.

I also helped to test the amplifier using a power supply, wave generator, and an oscilloscope. Learning how to hook everything up and power it took a decent amount of time on Saturday but we ran at least 1 successful test with the amp.

This week, I focused on researching suitable lithium polymer (LiPo) batteries to power an amplifier and reviewed the code for a chassis kit sourced from Amazon. The aim was to ensure compatibility, efficiency, and safety in integrating these components into our project.

 

After looking at LiPo battery models and specifications suitable for powering the amplifier and analyzing battery capacity, discharge rates, and form factors to meet project requirements, I settled on 2200mah 3S 30C LiPo’s to power the microcontrollers and chassis motors. For the speaker and amplifier I chose 1500mah 4S 120C LiPos to power the speaker magnet. After reviewing the code that came with the chassis kit it looks like the vast majority of the work has been done for us. We likely will only have to change the pin connections in the code, wire it to the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi, and call the prewritten functions.

The next steps will be continue work on the design presentation and help assemble the equipment we ordered for the first test.

 

Over the course of this week I spent time researching different mecanum wheel chassis to determine which ones might fit our project best. My main source has been Amazon as it appears they have the most accessible kits with documentation.

While at the end of this week I feel confident in the final options I’ve narrowed down the chassis to there are still variables to consider that have not been fully defined.