Although this is design week, we went through the previous designs to see if all the components were working properly. We knew that the motor and the motor controller did not work so our goals
was to research on how to get the motor working with the motor controller and testing the functionality of the ultrasonic sensors, Arduino joystick, nrF24 receiver and transmitter, and the potentiometer with the Arduino.
We did a lot of research on the motor and found that we will probably need a contactor and precharge resistor along with other certain parts to operate the motor with our certain application. We contacted Kellycontrols and they sent us a simple wiring diagram and parts that we need to purchase such as a fuse and a control box. We purchased an RS232 cable to plug the motor controller into the computer so that we can diagnose what is wrong with it. This cable should hopefully come on week 2. We found that this simple wiring diagram did not require a contactor and precharge resistor, but it has other complications so we plan on testing it with the wiring diagram in the regular manual, which will need these parts.
Simple wiring diagram:
Preferred wiring diagram:
For the Arduino, we successfully got all the components working; however, we ran into some complications with the nrF24 wireless modules as the radio signal was not receiving. We tried many different codes to see if there was a software problem, checked the wires for continuity with a multimeter, and used different Arduino boards to see if it was a hardware problem. Nothing worked until we figured out only one of the nrF24 would transmit so we noted that the chip that did not have red wires will be the one used as transmitting. It should not matter as to which one can transmit or receive, but for some reason it only worked if this particular chip was used to transmit.
