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Sizhe Chen’s Status Report for 3/9

This week, my main focus was on completing the design document, which was due before Spring break, as we finalized the design of our system. Additionally, I successfully tested individual hall effect sensor circuits on a breadboard with an Arduino and began designing the PCB components. The hall effect sensor performed as expected, registering a higher voltage in the presence of a magnet. After the break, I plan to discuss with team members the precise threshold for distinguishing between black and white game pieces.

Our progress is slightly behind schedule due to the time spent testing the magnetic levitation device, but we are actively working to catch up as we finalized the change to the system after making the decision to switch to electro magnet.

Looking forward, I anticipate completing the PCB component design and placing the order by next week. Simultaneously, I will assist Cheiv in completing the construction of the x-y motor system and aim to have it operational with the arrival of the CNC shield by next week.

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Zipiao’s Status Report for 3/9

This week, given that our implementation of the piece movement system using magnetic levitation is proven unfeasible, we designed our new solution using electro magnets that can drag the piece along the designated path.

Also, since the stepper motor kits arrived, I started assembling the NEMA 17 linear actuator gantry system. During the assembling process, there are some assembling tools missing, which makes the process a bit behind schedule, but can definitely be caught up in the upcoming week since it’s an easily solvable issue: I need to go to ansys hall to find an electronic screwdriver with enough power to mount end plates to the actuator. Besides that, I completed the process of driving a stepper motor with arduino and A4988 stepper motor driver. Due to the fact that the CNC shield module has not arrived, an integrated testing with 2 stepper motors with x-y gantry system is not feasible at the time.

On the week after spring break, my major task will be to integrate the stepper motor with the x-y gantry. Up on finishing, our team will have a solid basis on controlling the movement system. The rest is just to mount a electro magnet to the top of the xy gantry to make the movement system complete. I will finish assembling the two NEMA 17 linear actuators with stepper motor and experiment with more delicate control of the stepper motor using arduino code that satisfies our criteria for the movement system.

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Zipiao’s Status Report for 2/24

This week, our major progress lies in the validation of magnetic levitation. With the commercial & pre-assembled magnetic levitation kit, we are able to successfully lift the magnet (piece) and drag it along the way, proving that the movement, once the piece is on the air floating, is feasible and stable. For interference, we’ve tested and figured out that if the interference is too high (placing lots of stacked magnets close), the floating magnet will be attracted, yet with a single small magnet, it remains stable for a distance. We may want to look deeper into the safe distance and make adjustments accordingly next week.

Schedule wise, we are a bit falling behind due to the delay in receiving the x-y gantry system, as planned from last week. Yet I still read some documentations on controlling the stepper motors with CNC shield module. I will likely get the xy-gantry to move and complete some testing with controlling two stepper motors next week. We will also continue to experiment with the magnetic levitation system to devise a way to stably move pieces in between without interference.

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Sizhe Chen’s Status Report for 2/24

I am pleased to report that this week, we successfully completed testing of the magnetic levitation device. Despite initial setbacks with the old device, the new device arrived this week and turned out to be functional. We tested for interference with permanent magnets.

Schedule-wise, we are somewhat behind as we just finished the magnetic levitation testing. We will try to catch up by working on everything we currently have on hand. We have started the software component, and we may receive the XY gantry by next week, which we will test as soon as it arrives.

Moving forward, Chiev will be working on the software component. Shuailin and I will implement the Hall effect sensors with Arduino and try to simulate our product scenario, putting a magnetic go piece onto a Hall effect sensor. We are confident that with the completion of device testing, we can now allocate more resources towards testing other parts of our system.

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Team Status Report for 02/24

This week, we mainly test and debug the magnetic levitation device.

Things we Learnt:

The movement during magnetic levitation without magnetic interference is pretty robust and stable as long as there are no sudden stop.

The maglev device can adapt to a wide range of weight and magnetic magnitude for the go piece.

The maglev device requires a very high x-y accuracy to pick up magnet from rest for levitation.

The interference to and from the maglev device to surrounding magnet is larger than expected: around 130 mm to ensure stableness during testing.

The current main risk is that according to the interference distance, the grid cell size will be much larger than we expected. We will have to test for locking mechanism together with the maglev device to finalize the grid cell size, and change the board size or game size accordingly as mitigation.

For next week, we will mainly test for locking interference with maglev, assemble the gantry and see if it can reach the desired accuracy for consistent maglev pickup.

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Shuailin Pan’s Status Report for 02/24

This week, I mainly help with testing and debugging the magnetic levitation device. We successfully make levitation work, ensure the feasibility of movement during maglev, test the accuracy requirement for the maglev device, test the interference distance, and deduce the rough general grid size requirement. (More details in Team status report) We also ensure the feasibility of using custom magnets for the maglev device:

For the Go feeding system that I’m responsible for, I designed a brief physical housing for the Go piece magazine and modeled it in Solidworks.

The current risk is that our rough interference distance estimate (about 130 mm) is relatively big compared to the gantry size (500mm x 500mm), which means the grid size (eg. 5×5 vs 6×6) may not be as big as we’d like. For possible mitigations, we need to test more robust locking mechanism, or switch to board games with smaller grid size (eg. Gomoku vs Tik-Tack-Toe)

Next week, we are going to test for electronic magnet locking mechanism and its interference with maglev design and test the gantry accuracy once it arrives. For piece feeding, I will use the laser cutter to cut out the design and see if the go piece mag works.

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Shuailin Pan’s Status Reports for 02/17

This week, I mainly discusses the quantitative metrics that we need for the design report and help with soldering and debugging the DIY magnetic kit with Chen.  I also continue on doing research about stepper motor torque calculation and magnetic force calculation to prepare for the design metrics.

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/tools/stepper-motor-calculator/

https://www.kjmagnetics.com/calculator.asp

Risk management wise, due to the failure to debug the center piece of our project (maglev device), the risk is skyrocketing, since many of the tests such as interference and movement are dependent on the maglev device. To get back on schedule, we have decided to leave the finicky maglev device alone and switch to commercial product for more reliability. Luckily, for the gantry system, we decide to buy half-built system instead of building from scratch, which would leave some extra time in our original schedule.

Next week, aside from the design presentations, I will mainly focus on testing the new commercial maglev device with our teammates, and also start building and testing the integrated feeding system using device that match the specs from this week’s calculation.

 

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Chiev’s Status Report for 2.17

This week, I made progress on the specs of the xy-gantry system, as planned from last week. Specifically, I figured out the exact hardware needed for making the xy-gantry. Two V-Slot® NEMA 17 Linear Actuator Bundle are needed to form the basis of the x-y gantry. The stepper motors (NEMA 17) are included in the bundle with the track to move a platform in their axis. We only need to assemble the two bundles on top of each other in order to make the system move. Next, we will need two A4988 stepper motor drives that can seamlessly drive the two motors in the bundle. We will need another module CNC shield to act as the interface between our Arduino UNO board and the drives.

My progress remains on track according to the original schedule. Looking ahead to next week, I aim to focus on ordering and testing the movement of the x-y gantry system. I will start exploring the code to control the movement of the two axis. The final goal of this will be to write an Arduino interface program that can precisely control the stepper motor to move to a specific location given the location of the cross on the gomoku board, yet for next week, since we still need time to order and get the hardware, I will set the goal to successfully connect the hardwares (motors, drivers, cnc shield, and arduino uno), and leave the complete interface development to the week later.

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Team Status Reports for 2/17

Our most significant risk is still the feasibility of magnetic lavation device, as the feasibility testing failed for the device we bought this week. We definitely need to have a functional device as soon as possible as we anticipate the arrival of a new existing commercial device.  Our main focus next week will still be testing out the magnetic lavation device and start building the software component of the system.

For the design, we moved from building a magnetic levitation kit to an existing commercial product due to the complexity of troubleshooting the existing device. We made this change because debugging the existing device may take effort and time beyond our expectation and we are unsure if it will function as expected even if we get the device working.

Schedule wise, we have to postpone the feasibility testing to next week and we plan to start doing software as early as next week.

 

A was written by Sizhe Chen, B was written by Shuailin Pan and C was written by Chiev Wan.

Part A: Our device can have a positive impact to the well-being of the public by acting as a great  entertainment tool. Since playing Gomuku online may not be  readily available to the elders, maGomuku would a great alternative way to have fun with their friends. Safety wise, we aim to create a device that is easy to use so that users do not have to interact with the magnetic levitation device itself which might cause safety issue. We also aim to use compo

Part B: Similar to Go, Gomoku originates from Asia and is representative of the Asian culture in board games. Moreover, due to the simplicity of Gomoku compared to Go, it is also much easier to learn and can help promote Asian culture to a wider demographics (especially children).

Part C: Our design uses commonly used electronic components like stepper motors, Arduino Uno, motor drivers and magnetic levitation kit, all of which has mature manufacturing and supply chain power all around the world, making it easy to produce and distribute. Other than electronics part, we will likely adopt wood, plastic and permanent magnets, which are also common materials that can be easily acquired at anywhere, making the consumption of our project easy.

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Sizhe Chen’s Status Report for 2/17

This week, my primary focus has been on constructing the magnetic levitation device that was delivered on Monday. I soldered everything up yet the devices failed to work (see the attached photo for the device). I dedicated hours to troubleshooting, but the lack of  instructions and feedback from the manufacturer hindered progress. My team decided to move from this device to an existing commercial device that is ready to use out of the box. 

Regrettably, this setback has delayed our progress with magnetic levitation testing. However, we aim to regain momentum next week by completing testing with the new device and start moving the focus to the software component of our system, which remains independent of the physical device.

 

With the arrival of the new magnetic levitation device expected by the end of next week, we anticipate completing testing. Additionally, we aim to finalize the entire system design, while I will personally start testing the hall effects sensor components for detection.