Build Blog 5: Reading Week Progress
- Abhinav Agrahari
- Feb 24, 2023
- 2 min read
Hi everyone! This week's blog post is focused on our team's progress during Reading Week!
Electrical
Signal Tests
Last blog post, I mentioned that some signals on the PCB experience ringing and gave a solution to it. Glad to find that this ringing is no longer present, as shown below:
Wiring harnesses
During the past week we've created all our wiring harnesses for the various sensors and actuators in our project. ime consuming but necessary work!
Remote Control Outlet Test
Since the last blog post, we've also run additional tests on all our sensor interfaces. We're now able to read all sensor inputs, and actuate individual motors. Once issue found during testing was influence of electrical noise in our remote control outlets.
The Raspberry Pi connects to our PCB and, through it, is able to remotely control several electrical outlets. This is a key element in order to automatically control the lights in our system. During testing it was found that random electrical noise present near the system can result in these outlets randomly switching on/off.
The video below shows this issue, when no code is running on the Raspberry Pi: Notice how the remote-controlled outlets on the left automatically switch on sporadically as I take my hand near the PCB.
Luckily, after some debugging we were able to solve this issue! The next video shows a demo of automatically controlling the electrical outlets on the left.
Mechanical
Besides Electrical testing, we also got a head start on the mechanical components during this Reading week.
Structural Manufacturing
After a short delay, all materials have finally been received, and manufacturing of mechanical components has been started.
Electronics Enclosure
The team has also finished manufacturing of the electronics enclosure. The next step is to integrate our electronics into it!
Stay tuned for more updates next week as we integrate the software and electronics, and assemble the mechanical structure!
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