Week 2/23 - 2/27

To start off the week there was no school on Monday or Tuesday due to snow that led to roads not being cleared in time. Even with the shorter week though I was still able to get a lot done.

On Wednesday I got to work on R2 and designing the PCBs for him and the controller. There were four parts that needed to be added to the electronics libraries which were the metro minis, receivers, joysticks, and servo motors. The metro mini I was just able to import from previous projects but the other three I had to start from scratch. For both the joystick and the servo motors they aren't directly attached to the PCB, but connected through jump wires so I could just put pins for the 3D model. The receiver I had to actually make the model as it will sit directly on the PCB, and I need to be able to accurately tell how things will fit on the PCB.

After putting all of those components in the library I realized that I still needed to add my power source. This will be in the form of two 3.6V lithium-ion batteries that are connected. This comes out to around 7.2V, but my components require 5V so a voltage regulator will also have to be included. Along with that is a two position switch which will be used to turn on and off the connection between the battery and the rest of the PCB so they aren't drawing power when R2 isn't being used. I will continue to work on that next week.

Tim had finished designing the underwater ROV and had confirmed dimensions for some of the parts so he asked if Ben and I would make some of them for him as we have milling experience. For the particular part we're making Tim needs three of them so while I was cutting the stock Ben started to work on facing them down. We were using 1 x 1 inch aluminum stock and the part requires one side to be 0.75 inches which takes quite a few passes on the mill so facing some of the pieces was all we were able to accomplish. The rest of it is pretty easy to machine and should only take a day or two to finish the rest.