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Here are some useful resources and reminders from practicums past to refresh your memory.
Formatting of Practicums
Formatting of Practicums
Deliverables Section Notes.
Lab Skills refers to physical tools or skills that will be developed in the practicum.
Lab Concepts refer to useful practices or ideas that are taught in lab (calibration curve, PWM).
Tutorial Skills refer to methods or ideas that tie back to tutorial, like deriving an equation of motion or straight line approximations for bode plots.
Data to Save outlines graphs or data to be saved for a future lab, and will have the submission sheet linked. The same icon will be used in throughout the practicums to mark and remind you when to save data!
This header means that this section of the practicum refers to what you learned in tutorial that week. Having notes from tutorial will be useful, and you will likely see aspects of this practicum in your problem sets!
Challenge Questions:
In some practicums, you will see numbered red questions. When you see one of these questions, you should record your answer on a separate sheet of paper, then compare your answers against the correct answers at the end of the practicum.
Explore Questions:
These questions come in two formats, one is “hover” and the other is multiple choice. Examples are shown below. You are encouraged to think before hovering or clicking an answer!
Useful Info from Previous Practicums
Useful Info from Previous Practicums
For more info, see Practicum 2B.
The knob with the illuminated circular arrow thing is used for controlling things in the menu, not exclusively related to the trigger.
Figure 1. Oscilloscope "dashboard".
Saving the Signal
Saving the Signal
More detail on saving the signal:
Now that you are familiar with how to take different ways to freeze acquisition, you will learn how to save the data to a USB drive. Reattach the probe hook to Demo 2 so you have a periodic signal showing again.
Insert the USB drive into the USB port of the oscilloscope. It is located underneath the display.
Press the Save/Recall button located in the File section of the oscilloscope controls panel. The button is highlighted in Figure 12.
Once you are in the Save/Recall menu, press the Save softkey located under the display.
Then, press the Format Setup softkey and use the Entry knob (see Figure 12 for location) to select the CSV data (.csv) file format. The .csv file format can be opened in many different types of programs, including Excel.
If you would like to save the waveform in a specific directory within your USB device, use the second (Save to) softkey to navigate to the desired directory. The scope saves waveforms in the main directory, by default. Saving in the main directory is fine practice unless you have many, many files.
To finally save to the directory, press the Press to Save softkey on the right. You should receive a message confirming your file has been saved after a quick loading bar!
Dry Testing Guide
Dry Testing Guide
Attach your umbilical to your circuit board and the balloon pump to your pressure sensor. Then attach your circuit board to one of the control boxes in the center of the room. The dry test rig, including the control box and computer, is pictured in Figure 2. Look at the VI running on the computer connected to your control box.
For practicums 2C, 2D and 3A:
Make sure the toggle switch points toward PWM (not sinusoid) and manipulate the PWM slider to verify that your motor spins.
Do the same thing while your motor is submerged in the bucket of water next to the test rig and confirm that your motor is properly waterproofed.
Pump the balloon pump and verify that the VI registers the change.
For Practicums 5A, 5B and 5C:
Enter values into the Calibration fields to the left of the sliders that are appropriate for your robot. Use default values if you don't have your own.
Check that the temperature is reasonable (~25C for room temperature) and that it changes if you hold it with your fingers.
Check that pressure changes when you blow on the tube.
Make sure the toggle switch points toward PWM (not proportional) and manipulate the PWM slider to verify that your motor spins.
Set the toggle switch to proportional, then move the desired depth close to the current measured depth. Pump the balloon pump and verify that your motor changes direction when measured depth crosses the desired depth.
Figure 2. Dry test rig.
Extending Wires
Extending Wires
If you need to extend your motor wires, please follow the following instructions.
Figure A.1 shows a picture of a motor whose wires need to be extended.
Figure 3.1: Example of motor whose wires need to be extended.
Cut two 8” lengths of wire to extend your motor wires. Strip both ends of the wires. Cut your motor wires, leaving as much room as possible. Cut four short lengths of heat shrink and put two pieces onto each extension wire. Figure A.2 shows these steps. Note that in the example pictures below, the motor is not connected to anything. Make sure to insert the heat shrink now -- you won’t be able to add the heat shrink after soldering!
Figure 3.2: (a) Motor and wires to splice in; (b) Motor wires cut and heat shrink inserted onto spliced wires.
With the heat shrink pieces still on the extension wires, solder together the four connections between wires. You can simply place the wires side by side and add solder, as shown in figure A.3 to the right. You can also twist the wires together if it is difficult to keep them attached.
Figure 3.3: Soldering two wire ends together.
After soldering all four connections, slide the four heat shrink segments over the exposed wires. Then use a heat gun to shrink the heat shrink.
Figure 3.4: (a) Heat shrink before applying heat; (b) Heat shrink after applying heat.
Connectors and Cables
Connectors and Cables
Here is a list of all the connectors and cables you will find in the practicum room, with picture references below.
Alligator clip (Figure 4.1)
BNC female (Figure 4.2)
BNC male (Figure 4.3)
Banana plug male (Figure 4.4)
Banana plug female (Figure 4.5)
Hook clip (Figure 4.6)
Double male Banana plug to female BNC (Figure 4.7)
Double male Banana plug to male BNC (Figure 4.8)
Double female Banana plug to female BNC (Figure 4.9)
BNC splitter (Figure 4.10)
Banana plug female to BNC female (Figure 4.11)
Alligator clip to Banana plug female (Figure 4.12)
BNC male to Hook clips (Figure 4.13)
BNC female to hook clips (Figure 4.14)
BNC female to Alligator clips (Figure 4.15)
Alligator clip to Banana plug male (Figure 4.16)
BNC cable (Figure 4.17)
Banana plug cable (Figure 4.18)
Alligator clip cable (Figure 4.19)
Multimeter probes (Figure 4.20)
Oscilloscope probe (Figure 4.21)
Figure 4.1: Alligator clips
Figure 4.2: BNC female
Figure 4.3: BNC male
Figure 4.4: Banana plug male
Figure 4.5: Banana plug female
Figure 4.6: Hook clips
Figure 4.7: Double male Banana plug to female BNC
Figure 4.8: Double male Banana plug to male BNC
Figure 4.9: Double female Banana plug to female BNC
Figure 4.10: BNC splitter
Figure 4.11: Banana plug female to BNC female
Figure 4.12: Alligator clip to Banana plug female
Figure 4.13: BNC male to Hook clips
Figure 4.14: BNC female to hook clips
Figure 4.15: BNC female to Alligator clips
Figure 4.16: Alligator clip to Banana plug male
Figure 4.17: BNC cable
Figure 4.18: Banana plug cable
Figure 4.19: Alligator clip cable
Figure 4.20: Multimeter probes
Figure 4.21: Oscilloscope probe
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