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Our Team's Final Creation
The proudest moment for our team was finally being able to make our OTV move properly after multiple attempts. At first, we needed to get our motor mounts and wheels on our chassis. This meant measuring out and drilling all the required holes to secure the motor mounts. Once that was completed, we had our motors secured in place and were ready to test to see how they worked. From here on out, we now had to solder on our wires to the motors and connect the wires to the microcontroller. Next, we used male to female wires to connect the microcontroller to the Arduino.
Before attaching the wheels to the motors using the hex adapters, we decided to test out the forward and reverse code to observe if the motors were able to spin. As a result of this test, we found out that one of the motors wasn't able to spin. As a team we first reviewed our wiring and the code to see if there were any errors. We asked for help from the TA’s and Mike to see if they were able to confirm the problem. After a considerable amount of reviewing, we figured out that the soldering was the problem. We removed the problematic motor and resoldered the motor again. After we resoldered the motor, we tested the motor with the code and it began to spin. After some time, we then had some other problems with getting our wheels to move the way we wanted them to move. When we started, each wheel would either turn clockwise or counterclockwise and would just generally do the opposite of what we had wanted. For instance, we’d have our front right wheel going backwards while our back right wheel went forwards. This distinct observation showed us that there was something definitely wrong with our code. When we first tried to fix this, we still had all of our motors running and changed multiple things but after failing for some time, we changed our approach. We first turned off three motors and began testing each motor one by one. After each test we changed either one of our functions or variables themselves. By going in and testing each wheel individually, we quickly got all our motors turning the correct way.
Figuring out the problem
Motors Spinning.movSolved: Motors spin
At this point, we could now put our wheels onto our OTV and really test its movement. Unfortunately, we somehow forgot to buy wheels with rims so without any options left before milestone five, we just had to go in and order some new ones. The shipping time on our order said our wheels would arrive after the milestone though, so that meant we would have to turn it in late. As described in the first prompt, we were at a loss about what to do. Although after some thinking we made cardboard wheels which actually worked and got us the points for milestone five. When the next class came around, we had our new wheels and were finally ready to finish up. We screwed in all of our wheels with the hex adapters on and now had a somewhat working OTV. We then uploaded our most updated and working code which only had one simple purpose which was to move forward. We placed our OTV on the ground and as we hoped, it moved forward. As our first real big success with the OTV, this was a very meaningful moment for us. After doing calculations, planning, and much more we finally saw some of the fruits of our labor. As we worked together through these challenging times, we were able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It shows that with good teamwork, communication, and everybody's effort, we could really accomplish this great task and make Mike proud.
PXL_20211105_183209545.mp4Cardboard + Tape = Movement
When faced with challenging problems - teamwork, having fun, and hard work is the answer
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