P 11212 Team Nicholas Giudice Gokhan Karahan Daniel

P 11212 Team: Nicholas Giudice, Gokhan Karahan, Daniel Sirgey Guide: Philip Bryan With teams: 11211 and 11213 Land Vehicle for Education: Controls Team Mission Statement Graphical User Interface The purpose of this project was to develop a communications interface for a robot base with a modular attachment. The customer is the Mechanical Engineering department of RIT, looking for a useful project for first year mechanical engineers to work on. Building off previous projects (including the development of an in house RF solution) we aim to bring a useful and easy to use interface for the LVE. Since the targeted audience for the project is Freshmen Mechanical Engineering students, having a clear and useable GUI was an important factor in the project. Since we were already using a derivative of the Processing language for the control board programming, we decided to stick with it for the GUI programming as well. The GUI was written to be as extensible as possible at the time, with the option of different MSAs being used in the future. Notable Customer Needs The main driving forces of the design were that it was open source/open architecture, as well as be something that would be emulated or used outside of just the ME department. Following that were the needs to be safe and cost effective. To that end, we designed a simple control board, as well as a clean graphical control interface. Previous Iterations The current design for the LVE is built upon the work of previous years teams. The current design represents large improvements over the most recent iteration. The overall cost of the control system was reduced from 500 dollars to 150 dollars. In addition the total space required for the controls was drastically reduced by removing additional hardware elements and replacing them with more compact ICs. Additionally, unlike past years models the current LVE uses an in house RF solution known as WOCCS which was created by RIT students during the fall and winter quarter Multidisciplinary Senior Design. By using WOCCS the LVE team guarantees an open source and open architecture solution that can be used and improved in the future. Control Board Design The MSA Control Board boasts a Arduino Nano which contains most importantly an ATMega 328 and 5 V Linear Regulator. The design also includes two L 298 Dual H-bridges which are designed to support up to 25 W of power and up to 3. 6 A of peak current each. Each L 298 is used to drive one of the two motors on the LVE. The use of PWM outputs from the Arduino Nano allows for variable speed in the control of the LVE. GUI Design The LVE was designed to be driven with a Logitech Dual Analog Controller, to utilize its two joysticks to implement differential drive. The GUI supports this, as well as allowing for direct input using the buttons, if no joystick is present. Interfacing The control board is just a single part of the LVE, and the interfaces with the rest of the teams and previous projects was a priority. The control board is the hub of communications for the entire system, receiving commands from the WOCCS board, then passing them on to the motors or MSA. Control Board Layout About the Hardware: 2 Serial Interfaces through UART Acceptable input voltage range of 9 V to 6. 2 V Operational up to 90°C Conclusion The LVE looks to be a useful and fun project for first year mechanical engineers to use coming into 2013. With a bit more work, that appeal can extend beyond the ME department, and possibly beyond RIT. As we look back on the project, we would like to thank the rest of the teams for all their help and hard work. Without them, our project wouldn't be nearly as effective as it turned out.