What tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?

Physical Build

The Track has been designed and cut on ShopBot and laser cutter. A test assembly has been made to confirm the parts will fit but most of the sections are have not yet been assembled. The manual starting gate has been tested. The automated starting gates have been theorized but I haven’t even designed them yet. The finishing line sections are done and the finish line sensor boards fit great. I have planned but not designed an enclosure for the control board.

Electronics and Programming

The first rev of the main board has been produced and populated. The finish line sensor boards are done, functioning and fit in the track. I haven’t populated the connectors for the starting line electronics because I don’t know what they will look like yet.

I have a very basic version of the Android App. It will need some UI polish and extra functionality if I add the starting line.

What’s working? what’s not?

The manual starting line, modular track assembly, finish line sensors, and the basic Android app are working. I have a lot of assembly to do but test fits show that should work. I have to design an electronics enclosure and plan for the wiring. If I’m able to automate the starting line, I will need to design, build, and code that.

What questions need to be resolved?

Do I have time to automate the starting line? I think I can replace the manual release with a servo fairly easily with a 3d printed bracket but I have not yet designed it. I have outputs already designed into the circuit board for the starting line and the code to run a servo is very easy.

Will all the sections fit together? I haven’t assembled any of the down curve sections yet. Dry fit looked good but there could still be fit up problems in final assembly.

What will happen when?

I have 4 days left.

Track assembly will happen on Monday.

I will finish the circuit board on Tuesday.

I will design and print the electronics enclosure Wednesday.

I will integrate, test, and record the video on Thursday.

What have you learned?

I’ve learned a ton through Fab Academy and this project specifically.

For the fabrication I had to learn about CAD sheet metal tools to flatten out the curved track sections to be laser cut flat and then curved. I also had to to a lot of experiments with kerf cutting on the ShopBot to get the plywood to bend smoothly.

I had never done circuit board design before Fab Academy and this was my fist project using an esp32 microcontroller. I kept getting confused because every pin can do PWM output but not every pin can do analog input so I had to do a few revisions of the board and some patch wires to get the sensor inputs into the software.

I learned a lot about implementing Bluetooth LE on the esp32 and on Android with MIT App Inventor. This caused a lot of frustration during networking week but I did figure it out for this project.