Week 12: Progress and Problem

The Prototype

This week we finally got the laser cut and now we assembled the prototype. This is what we have established so far in comparing the to original prototype the structure is keep the same. Only few changes in dimension and thickness of material.

The problem that we have with the prototype is that. The pieces were cut so perfectly that the chip(part that will be installed into the rail and attach to the box) lines up perfectly to the rail and leave no gap for it to move along the rail. Therefore we needed to use sand paper to sand it down to the size where it can move along the rail smoothly.

The other problem that we had was the glue used to stick the pieces together. Janu tried to find glue that could stick wood to plastic and plastic to plastic. The problem is that the glue dry out very slow and it ended up was not placed properly, that result in the box couldn't not move through the rail properly.

The Arduino

 

After trying to get the motors to work now I have faced a problem with Arduino and DC motors. At the moment I can get the motor to move into 2 opposite direction however it does not always work all the time. Sometime the motor seem to stop rotating and sometime it seem to rotate really fast. The problem that I can identify is the power supply to the motor. Motor seem to rotate really weak after button is pressed for a while.

The problem is that the motor require a higher voltage then Arduino can supply. Especially two DC motors require much higher voltage. 

The solution that I can think of now is to supply separate power source to the two motors. To do this that means the motor need to be controlled separately by the 2 L293D IC and to work more efficiently on the two separate breadboard.

I would like to get rid of the LEDs as well as I might take up power from both Arduino and the battery, even a little amount but still something.