Last Day - Presentation

The last class for Electronics 10

We started with how to buy electronics parts online or in local store

we can get the list on professor mason's web site

we might need it in the future when we are doing more complicated electrnoics class

later, we did the presentation on our robot baby scropion

and it went pretty well

 The last thing we need to do for the class was to organize all the stuff we have and reture it

 We spent lots of time to break down the robot and put all the parts into the vex kit

and we just waited to be evaluate

That was all for electrnoics 10 class

hope everyone enjoys the class

and thanks to Professor mason for teaching us very valuable knowledge that we can use it in the future life

Day 18- Prepare for presentation

Last week of the class

We were told to prepare a presentation about the robot

The main three point is

• Big Fonts
• Dont put lots of the work
• Need to pratcie for the presentation

 And we left early to do the powerpoint at home :D

Day 16 & 17 - Competition Day

Day 16- Friday
Professor Mason gave one extra day to work on the project

We programmed more stuff in our robot
and we also make some change of the design of the robot


Day 17- Competition Day

We met at Cal State Fullerton fort the competition

We tried to make everything perfect and thought about lots of new ideas

But at the end

We change the program to the original, which is really simple

and the result was very surpised


that we got the right color and the position of the can was just fine

 and the can got stock into the car and the car drove to the correct place

Day 15- Finishing the final project

Last day for the project

We were suppose to test our robot today

But there are so many problems to be solved in our robot

We used most of the time to figure out the programming in our robot

Since we were so focus on the robot, me and my partner Jose forgot to take pictures

Our squarebot and search for the can, go towards to the can, and grab the can

but everything we test it, the robot rejects the right color of the can

and we used the entire four hours to do

But the good news is

Professor Mason gave us another day (Friday) to work on the robot

Hopefully we can finish the robot on time

Day 14-Vex Bot Project- Programming

Today's agenda was to write the program of the bot
we got the line sensor works, but at the end of the class
for some reason the car keep stopping at the same point, which mean the program ended


but for one time it work pretty good
and it actaully searched for the can and stop infront of the can
but it is unfortunate that we did not record the video

We hope we are able to finish everything on the testing day

good luck to us

Day 13- Vex Bot Project -Bulding Bot

This week is a critical week since we only have this week to finishing building and programming the robot
Today's schedual is to finishing building the robot
it took us to figur out how to put everything together such as the color sensor and the claw

We put a motor on the bottom inorder to turn the color sensor point to the ground or to the can

We also try to make some change to the claw so it is lighter and mor stable

The sensor and the motor all work as we tried

Now we just need to program the car to move, detect the color of the can, grab the can, and carry the can to the correct zone

Day 12 -Project Planning

Today, we were introduced a new mothoed of how to improve the efficiency of doing a project
After finishing the Gantt Chart
we started to do the work
first, I tried to figure out how the sonar sensor works

And we tried to make a claw to crab the cans
but we were not able to finish taht
so, we will finish it on Tuesday

Day 11

Today, we just need to finish soldering color & line sensor
and professor mason also explained how the competition is going to be

There will be few cans with different color being place in the middle
our mission is to make the robot determine which color the can is and make the can be in the correct section


later, I put the line sensor into the car

and it works!!!

even thought I burned out the one of the emiter

Day 10 - Building Sensors for your Robot

There are two sensors which are line sensor and color sensor
Since we have two people in a team, the work has been seperated
and I chose to make the line sensor


The line sensor is made up by the phototransistor

Phototransistors are phtodiode-amplifer combinations intergrated within a single silicon chip

Follow the schematic

With one of Emitter and one Detector
We will get

The one with the black tape around is the detector and the other one is Emitter
We will not able to see the light came out from the emitter, so we will need to have a camera point at it to see teh light

After finishing the circuit on the breadboard
We went to the fabrication room to solder these component

Day 9 - Vex Programming

Today, we took out our square bot and started to program it
first we will need to plug the cable into the PC

And you might need to download the prolific driver for the cable


plug the other end  to the serial port of the vex car

clear the memory in the car and you are able to start the programming

Our first goal is to get to the red box

The first method we are going to use is just estimate the distance and guess the amount of the the car will need to travel each section

we just need
power of the motor * amount of time it turns

this method is not really accuarte
for most of the student
the card is not even on the track but going all over the places


After done with this one
we were partner up with one other person
my partner is JOSE
and we will modify his vex car to do the next experiment


we will extend the front wheel axis so we are able to put the roataional sensor in

The red part is the sensor

and this time we will use how many rotations turn inorder to calculate the distance it travels

That is how our car goes
We were kind of out of time
so for few sections we just guess the number of roataion
and that cuz the car went wrong in the middle

Day 8 - Evaluate hacking toy and 555timer, Oscilloscopes and Servos

While we are doing the  555timer handout
Professor mason needed to evaluate our first project, Hacking a toy

Overall, the score of my robot was pretty high
and I'm really surpised



Later, we were introduced a new chip, the 555 timer

It a very comment chip that it is still using in these modern day

The function of this chip is just control the timing of the output


Follow the schematic

After you are done with it
we replace either R1 or R2 with a 10K pot
and you will get

Later, we change the LED to a sounder
If the LED flashes too fast, we were not able to observed by our eye, but we can observed by the ear

Next, we are going to learn how to use an oscilloscope
After finishing the basic learning function of the oscilloscope

We need to connect the oscilloscope probe to the 555 circuit at pin 3 and another end at the negative leg of the sounder

we are suppose to get this reading on the oscilloscope

and here is the video for changing the pot effect the oscilloscope

Day 7 - Hacking the toy

Day 7

It is a simple day
We were just need to finish our first individual project

For mine toy, a music talking toy
I just need to learn how does the sounder work and connect to the circuit

Project 1 : Toy Hacking

The purpose of this project is to combine all the techniques which we learned from the previous classes

The main goal of the toy need to be
1. Control by the microcontroller
2. Need to have some forms of input from user to toy
3. Using software to control the general movement of the toy


Here is my toy

For the toy, I am using a PC with a serial port connect to the microcontroller to control the movment of the toy
I also make the sounder connect to the microcontroller so I can play the music


With the serial input mode of the microcontroller, I am able to send a letter to the microcontroller and it can response the input with a certain action that I programed such as playing a music with action of the toy at the same time
I can also seperate the movement so the toy can either just play the music or just have some kind of action


Unfortuentely, the toy I have has two motoer, but for some reason the motor that controls the body movement does not work
So, I am only able to control the mouth movement, which is open or close


I also add one song that is not build-in in the microcontroller

Day 6 - Interfacing to a Microcontroller and Hacking a Toy

Yesterady, we learned about how to use and how does a microcontroller do

today, we change a little bit on the circuit board

this time we use a 200mA incandescnet bulb instead of the LED

It took me a while to figure out how it works
I switch the direction of the transistor, and that cuase the transistor got really hot after letting the light up

after this, we were introduced a more powerful transistor so we can use the circuit for our hacking toy

we just took out the light build, and it will become like this

now we just need to hack the toy
the main goal of hacking a toy is to find the wires for the motor and extended so we can control the motor in the toy

after putting the wires into the circuit board, we were able to control the motin of the motor no

Day 5 - Introduction to Microcontrollers and Disect toy

What is a microcontoller?

A microcontroller is like small computer that was made on a cheap
It is a low-cost circuit that contains many functions such as memory, processing units, and in/out put in a single unit

For the circuit we are going to make today
we need
1. PicAXE 08m(PIC 12F683)
2. BreadBoard
3. Wires
4. Femal Din9(serial) connector with wire soldered on
5. 2 LEDs
6. 2 resistors b/w 200-500 ohms
7. 5V power supply
8. 10K Ohm & 22K Ohm resistor

Here is the schematic

After building it
you should get

The purpose of the Din9 connector is so we can format the data inside fo the microcrontroller by using a computer
here is the baic lines we should type
mian:
high 1
pause 1000
low 1
pause 1000
goto main

the 1 means output 1
pause 1000 means pause for 1 second since it's measure in milisecond
high and low means turn on and off
goto main just make the program to run again

We can also upgrade this circuit into multi-LED

Here are the details of pins of the M series microcontroller

 There are also other commands we can use to make the program better
such as the syombols, Comments & White-Space
you can type
symbol LED =1

this mean we change the name of the output1 into LED
when we type in the program we type LED instead of 1
this makes the program look for readable

the Comments ;
allows us to type describtion on the side and the program will not run it
high LED ;LED on


 Using Digital Inputs
Common digital sensor are
1. microswitches
2. push and rocker switches
3. reed switches

adding this part to the circuit
Result

we can control the light to start to light up for 1 second and shut untill we press the bottom again


Next step, we will change the switches into a LDR (light Dependent Resistor)
follow the schematic shown below

we will get

Day 4 -Transistor Switching and Build a Logic Porbe

The first 20 min are trying to finish the squarebot

Doesn't have battery on

After finish, we just put the kit and the bot aside and move onto the next part, transistors

______________________________________
Transistor Switching

We had introduced new surplus call transistor

A transistor can switch a flow of electricity


After learning the function of transistor, we were told to build a circuit  as shown below

And the final look is

And we did some change on the circuit
we took out one of the resistor and the pushbottom and put two wires in
now we use our fingertip to work as the push bottom

_________________________________


Now we were told to build a logi probe
A logic probe can determine the logic states at a particular point in an elctronic circuit
We can buy one like this for $20

But we also can build one by ourself for a very resonable price

first, we need to build the circuit on the breadboard first
and here are the schematic

This one is not a very difficult circuit to build since we had some practice on the transistor before

After familiar the circuit, we moved to the fabrication room to do the soldering

It took me a while to figure out the picture which show how the connection goes
But, I did figure out and finish the logic probe!!

Unfortunately, my positive wire(the red one) is too short, so I need to go back to get a longer one and solder it

Since we were in the fabrication room, we also made a part for the next project
A DB9 connector