November 21 - MotorTest

On to the next step. We test the RC's mother board front motor. Under the Arduino program library "Simple - Blink" example. We test the delay of the motor. Here's a rough sketch of the code we use to test the delay:

	/*
	Blink
	Turns on an Motor on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly.
	This example code is in the public domain.
	*/
	// Pin 13 has an cable connected to turn motor on RC car
	// give it a name:
	int led = 13;
	// the setup routine runs once when you press reset:
	void setup() {
	// initialize the digital pin as an output.
	pinMode(Motor, OUTPUT);
	}
	// the loop routine runs over and over again forever:
	void loop() {
	digitalWrite(led, HIGH); // turn the Motor on (HIGH is the voltage level)
	delay(1000); // wait for a second
	digitalWrite(led, LOW); // turn the Motor off by making the voltage LOW
	delay(1000); // wait for a second
	}

view raw MotorTest hosted with ❤ by GitHub

November 20 - Dismantle

Show of hands, how many of us took a cheap RC toy car apart giving to us either on Christmas, birthday or just because??? Well if some of you haven't you are missing all the fun:

We stripped our RC down to bear bones. We now have dismantle RC toy car, a mother board and well 4 guys. Now we need to study the RC's mother board, mainly study the main chip and its functionality.

Professor Sullivan once said "Google own the Universe." We didn't have to study the board in depth. All we had to do was type the name of the Chip in Google (well Google led us to this  :http://www.et.byu.edu/~bmazzeo/LTR/tech.phtml") and we now know the purpose of the main chip.

It's funny because I once told a friend "If you don't know the answer, don't ask me ask Google.

November 13 - RoboPlow

On November 13 as a group we came up with numerous ideas, from designing the well known cartoon figure Wall-E to remote control police car. All were terrific ideas but very challenging projects to construct in a short period of time. All until we came up with RoboPlow Mini. It might sound like "oh here's another RC build off," well not really. Our idea of a plow vehicle comes from this YouTube video below: 

Pretty Cool huh!!!

We wanted to come close to this build off. What makes Mini-RoboPlow come to live:

PING Sensor

Plow

RC Toy Car

Arduino Board

A series lines of codes

And 4 guys

From here we begin our journey...

Enjoy!!!

Project Initial Ideas

Project Overview

Today, we came up with some initial ideas for our project. The design we have chosen is a sandplow with sensors to detect walls. The plow will push sand forward, detect a wall, move in reverse and turn to push sand at its sides, repeating the process. LED lights of different colors will be lit based on the direction of the plow.