Ella’s Status Report for 4/18

This week I made more fabrication progress. I installed foam to the focus motor and got the base of the light laser cut. I fit the pan mechanism and the arms into the box and got them working. I soldered all of the motor drivers and their associated circuits (capacitors, etc) and fit them into the box with long leads so that we can connect each circuit’s data wires to the microcontroller. I screwed the microcontroller in place and tried to screw the power supply in, but realized that I cut the holes in the box to fit M3 bolts but the power supply takes M4 bolts, so I’ll need to drill the holes out a bit more or fix the power supply to the base in a different way. Chloe and I fed the wires from the head of the light through the cable harnessing, and the head of the light is ready to mount. The next step (mounting the head of the light and testing the tilt mechanism) has been stressing me out SO MUCH for SO LONG and I am very worried about it but I will do it soon (in the next few days). We are slightly behind where we wanted to be but we will work this week to catch up and also we have next week to really pull things together if needed. I really wish we had more of the project complete for the final presentation, but it is ok and we will present what we have so far.