User:JBers/enes100/My Work

Hovercraft Project Spring 2012

Write problem/project Goal
What is your wording of the overall problem/project goal?

My First Task
What are you going to do for the team this first weekend?

Summary of actual work over first weekend
I planned to have the speed controller/knob/propeller fully functioning and controlled. However I was unable to finish getting the prop to spin consistently.

Week1 Narrative
Tell a detailed story describing what you did for your team over the weekend. Over the weekend I took the Arduino/propeller/knob/speed controller home to learn how to program the knob to control the speed of the propeller that is going to propel/steer the team's hovercraft. I was also able to locate a small toy hovercraft at home as well as a more complex radio controller/servo kit that was part of a model airplane kit.

My Second Task
Record what you are planning on doing for the team during the second weekend.

Summary of actual work over second weekend
Continued work deciphering ESC Controller and Prop board. Downloaded/printed programming and diagramming on the Thunderbird 9 ESC Controller from the Castle Creations website.

Also used the Tutorials from the Arduino website(Learning Section) How is what you did different than what you planned?

Week2 Narrative
Tell a detailed story describing what you did for your team over the weekend.

My Third task
Record what you are planning on doing for the team during the third weekend.

Summary of actual work over third weekend
How is what you did different than what you planned?

Week3 Narrative
Tell a detailed story describing what you did for your team over the weekend.

My Fourth task
Record what you are planning on doing for the team during the final weekend of project work.

Summary of actual work over fourth weekend
This week my project changed directions again. With the other groups getting the ESC controller working with the power boxes built, I moved on to completing the RC Controller/Toy Hack, and applying what I had learned to the hovercraft.

Week4 Narrative
My first task was to complete the Arduino Tutorial, [|RC Toy Hack]. I worked my way through the tutorial to gain a solid understanding of how the Arduino/RC Controller/control board all interact. I also needed to study some of the Arduino programming language in order to figure out what the example in the tutorial was doing. After completing the tutorial, I was able to successfully read data via the Arduino serial monitor, for the action of one of the switches on the RC Controller. With this understanding of the rc controller, I was then able to start expanding on what I had learned by adding the code necessary to read data from both controls simultaneously. This was mostly a matter of copying certain lines of code and creating a few new variables to identify the second input and output. After much trial and error, I was able to create the proper coding to allow the rc controller to communicate with both motor outputs at the same time.

My next move was to apply this understanding of the RC Toy Hack tutorial to my group's hovercraft. The first thing I had to do was take disassemble the hovercraft in order to get at the control board. With the hovercraft body taken apart, access was now granted to the internal components. The first thing I had to do was separate the hovercraft into two pieces so that Wendell and I would be able to work on separate parts of the project at the same time. The hovercraft's battery pack was separated from the rest of the body and given to Wendell. He will use that power source to try to power both the Hovercraft and the Arduino controller. With my half of the hovercraft, I was responsible for wiring the hovercraft fans and power into the Arduino and establish communication between the motors, control board, Arduino, and rc controller.

After running through some initial testing I have found that the Arduino is capable of supplying

Complete Project Page
Follow the "project done" format.