User:Jriverar1995/project 1

Jeyasingh Nithianandam is my instructor.

Project Description
Constructing a Magnetic levitation system, and finding a use for it.

Equipment List

 * 1 Electromagnet
 * At least 1 neodymium magnet
 * 1 Potentiometer
 * Wires
 * 1 Hall effect sensor

Week 1 Narrative
In the first week Rami found 2 electromagnets from John who works in the engineering department. Once we got the electromagnets we started working with them.

Week 2 Narrative
In the second week we tried to power up the electromagnets using 2 AA batteries which did not work. We then tried a 6V battery which didn't work as we wanted it to because we figured out it did not give the electromagnet enough power but we could still feel that there was some sort of attraction. Once we felt that we realized we needed a bigger battery so we got a 24V battery from the engineering lab and we hooked it up and it worked.

Week3 Narrative
In the 3rd week we gave a presentation to the class about our project "Magnetic levitation" and about what each of us in our group are going to do and the problems we will face with the project.

Week4 Narrative
In week 4 we got new magnets on Tuesday from Bob he got them from an old harddrive and on Thursday we managed to measure the polarity of the new magnets with the arduino. The arduino measured the gauss of our magnets. All of our magnets had less than 0 gauss which means its north pole polarity, none of our magnets had a gauss above 0.

Week5 Narrative
We coded the arduino board from the original code which was given by the company Arduino. We were able to successsfully use the code to find the polarity of each magnet and its distances. We can now use the hall effect sensor and arduino computer program to find the right point which will levitate the object.

Week6 Narrative
We went ahead and took apart the hall effect sensor and located into front of the Electro Magnet. With the hall effect sensor in front, we will be able to measure the polarity of the magnet to the electro magnet and stabilize and find the right point which will levitate the object. We also programmed the arduino which will give us different reading in GAUSE which will define the polarity of the magnet. Pictures of the arduino and the codes are attached to the right of the page, and will be updated with further progress and work.

Week7 Narrative
During this week we still are figuring out how to wire and Jey told us to research H- bridges, PnP regulators and other things which we need in order for the Electromagnet to levitate, once we do figure out how to wire everything, then we will have to incorporate the Arduino which powers the hall effect sensor, after we do finish all that we should be very close to being finished.

Week8 Narrative
During this week we started wiring he electromagnet and what we had to do was convert volts to amps. Now since we are still novice engeering students we have no clue how to wire anything so Jey helped us by teaching us what we had to do.

Week9 Narrative
During this week our group did some improvements to our structure to make it look more presentable. Instead of hanging the electromagnet on by tape we thought of a way to hang it up using a little bit of screws and taped up the hall effect sensor because it has to go under neath the electromagnet and that was the only way it would stay.

Week10 Narrative
This week we had to present in front of all the engineering 101 students, and I was in charge of the teams cardboard presentation thing that people would see when they come to ask us about our project. We did a good job, but unfortunately, the Arduino program was not working for some reason, so we will have to see whats wrong with that next week.

Week11 Narrative
During this week we figured out that Rami's laptop does not work well with Arduino because he is using a mac so we will need to use someone elses laptop to fix our Arduino code to make sure it works.

Week12 Narrative
This is our last week of class and we have not received the materials we ordered except the new electromagnet. The new electromagnet is much more stronger than the one we had. We had to separate the electromagnets because there were two of them connected together by a rod. We also prepared for giving out final presentation for the seminar.