Bujji’s Status Report: Week 1

Week (Feb 10 – Feb 16)

• Worked out most of the bill of materials:
• IR Circuit: Researched how to improve the range of a traditional IR sensor and arrived at the below circuit (found at https://www.electroschematics.com/6114/long-range-ir-transmitter/). Circuit below can reach 10-15m. Reached out to Prof. Mukherjee to help me go through and finalize this circuit.
• NFC: Found an NFC module that communicates via the I2C protocol and read-and-write NFC stickers (very low cost) for the gates.
• Camera: Found and ordered cameras (1080p@30fps).
• Car: Worked in Solidworks to create a 3D model of the car. Took into weight distribution, wire relief segments as wells as heat dissipation methods.

Scheduling

Am behind this week, however, I did not realize how much of the circuit design would have to come earlier on in the design process. This does NOT change Sourav’s, David’s nor the general schedule, only mine.

Old Schedule
Dates	Task
Feb 4 – Feb 6	Come up with bill of materials for three cars
Feb 6 – Feb 8	Come up with bill of materials for five gates
Feb 8 – Feb 15	Design the physical layout of a car
Feb 15 – Feb 22	Design the PCB that goes in the car
Feb 22 – Feb 25	Design the physical layout of a gate
Feb 25 – Feb 28	Electrically connect PCB to raspberry and test for short-circuit connections
Feb 28 – Mar 3	Assemble motors, raspberry pi, battery packs into chassis of vehicle
Mar 17 – Mar 19	Fix front wheels and rear-wheel axle and wheels to car
Mar 19 – Mar 25	Build RFID Scanner circuit, place circuit on the base of the car and wire scanner with the PCB
Mar 25 – Mar 31	Build IR blaster array and mount IR pulse gun on car
Mar 31 – Apr 4	Add colored LEDs for visual display of interaction
Apr 4 – Apr 9	Attach camera and finish car

 

New Schedule
Dates	Task
Feb 4 – Feb 6	Came up with a first draft of the bill of materials for three cars
Feb 6 – Feb 8	Started design of RFID and IR circuits
Feb 8 – Feb 15	Started design the physical layout of a car
Feb 15 – Feb 22	Finish circuit designs and physical layout of the car
Feb 22 – Feb 25	Design the PCB that goes in the car
Feb 25 – Feb 28	Design the physical layout of a gate
Feb 28 – Mar 3	Electrically connect PCB to raspberry and test for short-circuit connections
Mar 3 – Mar 5	Assemble motors, raspberry pi, battery packs into chassis of vehicle
Mar 17 – Mar 19	Fix front wheels and rear-wheel axle and wheels to car
Mar 19 – Mar 25	Place circuit on the base of the car and wire scanner with the PCB
Mar 25 – Mar 31	Mount IR pulse gun on car
Mar 31 – Apr 4	Add colored LEDs for visual display of interaction
Apr 4 – Apr 9	Attach camera and finish car

 

Next Week

• Meet with Prof. Mukherjee to finalize the IR transmission circuit.
• Meet with Sam Westenberg (our TA) to go over feedback given during the proposal presentation about the power management system. Discuss viable power supplies and requirements of the motors. Also need to discuss good
• Order parts for the RFID module, the IR circuits and prototype on a breadboard to test is pulses can be sent and received reliable at 10 m range.
• Start designing the PCB for the IR sensor array. Will most likely be a prototype PCB as ordering an actual PCB may be outside of our budget.
• Continue working on the car model (need to include mount for the camera, the IR sensors and the power supplies)
• Check if we need to order a GPIO extender shield for the rpi.

Deliverables for next week: Complete IR circuit diagram, updated renders of the physical layout of the car and a PCB prototyping plan for the IR sensors.