Revision as of 17:03, 19 October 2011 by Jrholmes (Talk | contribs)

Jason Holmes - Design Notebook

Week of Sept. 19

September 21, 2011 (1.5 hours):
Participated in teleconference with HKUST. The discussion included possible processor options as well as the general scope of the project. Also received the new usernames for the HKUST students created for the Rhea page - emailed them to the team members.

September 22, 2011 (20 minutes):
Updated the Rhea page with information about the teleconference for those who were not there.

September 23, 2011 (1 hour):
Attended weekly meeting with VIP group.


WEEK SUMMARY:

Accomplishments: Obtained usernames for HKUST members
Weekly Work Total: 2.7 hours
Project Work Total: 2.7 hours



Week of Sept. 26

September 27, 2011 (45 minutes):
Researched processors and wireless modules, updated brainstorming session on the Rhea page. Still a little unsure of what I think.

September 27, 2011 (30 minutes):
Created a whenisgood address to organize a group meeting to create a diagram of the desired system before our group meeting on Friday. Set meeting time after results from team members came in.

September 28, 2011 (1 hour):
Met with group members to create system diagram and discuss processor choice.

September 29, 2011 (45 minutes):
Finalized system diagram and did more research on a processor/development board.

High Level.jpg
Low Level.jpg

September 30, 2011 (1.5 hour):
Attended weekly VIP group meeting. Updated block diagrams to reflect discussions at the meeting and updated the Rhea page with notes from the meeting.


WEEK SUMMARY:

Accomplishments: Completed preliminary block diagram layout of system. Decided on potential processor family.
Weekly Work Total: 4.5
Project Work Total: 7.2



Week of Oct. 3

October 6, 2011 (2 hours):
Attended group meeting to design initial draft of poster for VIP poster session. Finished initial draft of poster at home and posted a pdf version to the Rhea site to be reviewed at Friday's meeting. Link here : Poster

October 7, 2011 (1 hour):
Revised poster based on Dr. Johnson's initial impressions and researched wireless transceivers.

October 7, 2011 (1.5 hours):
Attended weekly group meeting and updated Rhea page with meeting minutes.


WEEK SUMMARY:

Accomplishments: Finished poster for VIP poster session
Weekly Work Total: 4.5 hours
Project Work Total: 11.7 hours



Week of Oct. 10

October 11, 2011 (30 minutes):
Reformatted and submitted poster to be printed.

October 13, 2011 (1 hour):
Did research on development boards presented on Friday's meeting.

October 14, 2011 (1.5 hours):
Attended weekly meeting. Picked up development board!


WEEK SUMMARY:

Accomplishments: Decided on a development board to begin prototyping.
Weekly Work Total: 3 hours
Project Work Total: 14.7 hours



Week of Oct. 17

October 17, 2011 (30 minutes):
Updated Rhea page with Oct. 14 meeting minutes

October 17, 2011 (1 hour):
Got "Blinky" to run using KEIL software!

Blinky

October 18, 2011 (3 hours):
Attended scheduled meeting to decide on project parameters.
Vehicle Platform: Airsoft RC Electric Panzer Giant BattleTank

  • This vehicle was chosen because of its size and peripherals. It has plenty of room with a size of 2.5ft x 1ft.
  • It also has a moving turret already which is perfect for mounting a camera. In addition, the tank fires air soft pellets! This control can be investigated and added to the specs for the control of our vehicle if we want it to be able to fire.
  • We were concerned with the speed of the R/C cars of equivalent size - a lot of them up to 60mph. In addition, their cost was ~$150 and we are anticipating having to buy 2 to compensate for tearing one apart. At such a high speed, sensors to increase the autonomy of the vehicle would be virtually useless.


Wireless Module: RN-XV module

  • This module was simply chosen because of price and because it communicates through UART which is available for the Cortex-M3

IP Camera:TRENDnet TV-IP110WN Wireless N Internet Camera

  • It was very hard to find an appropriate IP camera. We wanted to find a camera that didn't depend on software. This camera is on the lower end of prices (hundreds were looked at) and it should work great.
  • All IP cameras have to be assigned a static IP address. This will need to be an option on the controlling website. Even if the camera was integrated, an IP update on the vehicle would still have to occur.


IR sensors and pushbuttons were chosen based on price. There is no need for long rang IR sensors.

October 19, 2011 (2 hours):
I did more research on IP cameras as I felt very unsure of using one. Also, I felt like using one would be lame. I found a $10 CMOS camera on SparkFun, and one of the comments stated that someone had success interfacing to it with a Cortex M3! This will cause a change in our wireless transceiver as the one we chose previously would not be able to handle the throughput needed. We will be able to use the same line of transceivers, we will just have to pay more.
Also attended VIP poster session which went really well.


WEEK SUMMARY:

Accomplishments: Decided on a development board to begin prototyping.
Weekly Work Total: 3 hours
Project Work Total: 14.7 hours




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