ELECTRONICS

Electronic Schematics

2 PIC32s are utilized in our project. For the three interactions with the PAL, we have a combination of responses of the cat's eyes, tail, sound, and arm motion.

Most of the sensors and feedback motion modules are controlled by the first PIC including the IR emitter and receiver, IR obstacle avoidance sensor module, and also force sensors with respect to 3 interactions. Signals of the IR receiver side are connected to the op-amp circuit follow by the comparator circuit for clean messages. The IR module senses when the user's hand is placed in a designated area. Whenever an obstacle is sensed, it returns high voltage. For the force sensors, they are in series with resistors to create voltage dividers. The pins read analog inputs and provide analog output to the tail servo.

The communication between the two PICs is important. Different pulse patterns were sent to the second PIC32 for a given signal. The signal pattern starts with an initial pulse of 70 ms pulse width and a certain number of pulses with a 20 ms pulse width, followed by a final pulse width of 35 ms. The decoding service in the second PIC is used to decode the signals and take the corresponding actions (play some audio, toggle on and off some LEDs, stop playing audio, ...).

#1 PIC32

Output modules on the first PIC including octal buffer connecting with 8x8 64-dot matrix, DC motor driver, servos, and signals sent to the second PIC.

For input, there are three sensors including a force sensor for petting interaction, an IR sensor for beam cutting, an IR obstacle sensing module for hand blocking, and a switch input: start button input.

#2 PIC32

The second PIC controls the Adafruit soundboard and game status bar. All the pins except the data receiving pin and the ACT pin are digital outputs. The soundboard pin is held low to trigger playing a soundtrack. Whenever a soundtrack is playing, the ACT pin will be high. By receiving information from ACT pin we can detect the status of the audio.