20. Project development¶
This week I continued to work on my final project
What has been completed, and what tasks remain?¶
- printed chassis and top cover
- Reprinted Omni-wheels for better traction
- calculated Omniwheel movements
- milling relevant PCBs for microcontroller and stepper
To do¶
- Assembly
- power system (deprioritized)
- Integrate with Computer application (establish connection with esp01 and computer)
Summary¶
The motors are able to rotate, and eventually the robot is able to move forward, albeit on rougher surfaces (wheels still skids on smooth surfaces). The robot has been packaged nicely, but communication with the application I’ve written in week 14 is not done yet. Will need to complete that asap for a full system integration.
I have decided to deprioritize the ultrasonic sensor functionality, but it will still send information about the distances measured in the 3 directions.
Updates (Near Final Presentation)¶
The integrations to the computer application is complete. However, there seems to be some form of interference that is causing the microcontroller to not receive backwards commands for one particular motor. Will need to squash those bugs another day and focus on video and presentation.
Lessons learnt¶
In this spiral, I kept on being sidetracked to do something that I think can be considered done. One such thing is the omniwheels. I did not know why I decided to hyperfocus on it rather than getting something to work before improving the wheels; a lot of time could’ve been saved if I had focused on the right things at the right time.
As I am juggling between 3 different lives, I was not able to make things work as I intended it to be. Many requirements were contradicting each other, including what I wanted the robot to be, what my employer’s expectation of the project as well as how much time I have to complete said project. Luckily by clinching every single second I have, I was able to make something that I felt was passable for this spiral.
In the future, I will be more focused and specific for each spirals, and choose to write instead of do as my first action when I identify something new.