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Coilgun Tank |
| 2/3/08 |
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| I have done a lot of work. First of all I finally got a working Gumstix Verdex XL6P motherboard. Third times a charm. I now have a SSH (secure shell) connection. It is basically the same as the serial connection but over WiFi. I also have switched from the aluminum tank I built, to a plastic one that I got cheap on e-bay. It was originally a RC tank, very cheap electronics. I first took the tank apart, riped out the main PCB, removed the lead-acid battery, and used a dremel to cut off some parts to make room for my electronics. It uses a 5v 3A regulator, H-bridge driver, S75 micro servo, Sharp IR sensor, Gumstix Verdex XL6P, netwifimicroSD-FCC, and a robostix.         |
| 2/14/08 |
| There have been many improvements to the tank's code. First the IR scanning code now runs on the robostix and not the gumstix. When the IR code ran on the gumstix it used the I2C buss very heavily causing the scans to be slow and the motor reactions delayed. Also most of the time the robostix just flashed a LED, now it uses that time to scan and saves the most recent scan data. Then when it is asked for the data by the gumstix it just tells it the most recent scan saving enormous time not having to wait for the servo to move and the ADC to finish. Another improvement is that thanks to the gumstix being a computer my program now runs as two threads. One takes the IR data and controls the motors, and the other updates the IR data continuously. Now the bad news. The h-bridge driver I was using was fried due to the large power draw of the cheap motors that were in the tank when I bought it. I replaced it temporaly with a dual motor gearbox. I have not, however, replaced the h-bridge so the tank is currently immobile. I was thinking about using two brush less motors as they have much more power for their size and don't wear out. The only problem is I don't want to spend more than $100 for two ESC (electronic speed controllers) and two motors. They are normally much less but I have yet to find one for cheap that goes forwards and reverse. Any suggestions? |