Weekly Report 6.20.05

The major problem I have run into this week involves my motor controller. It turns out that the TNX0 screw header on the Maveric-II board does not actually drive TTL values as the documentation implies. Instead, even with the appropriate switch flipped you still have to get the TTL values from PORTE. As a result, I am fairly certain that I ran -6 volts (still far too low, I am starting to wonder about the level shifter) across my controller. If it did ever work properly, it doesn't now. Fortunately, when I saw that something was wrong I put out an order for a few H-Bridges. While these don't provide as much functionality as the motor controller they should be perfectly appropriate for the application. A secondary problem is finding a place to mount an LCD, I need to wait until I see how much room my H-Bridge leaves me before trying to place the LCD.

Since my robot doesn't have mobility now that the motor controller is dead, I was unable to add software control to my IR triggers. However, I did finish the circuit and I wrote test code so I know that I can read values from the IR and respond to those values in programming. When the H-Bridges come in (which should be on Thursday) it should be a simply matter of getting collision avoidance coded, I expect to have it done by this weekend. After that, I have to mount the photovoltaic cells (used for light/dark detection) and then the only thing that remains to be done is finish my software and get my RF sensor circuit built. Despite this set back, I think that I should be on track, most of the legwork is complete and now it is just a matter of putting things together.