Yesterday I began a task which led to several others - today I got back on track with what I started.
Current Updates
This blog is an informal, and sometimes intermittent, record of my MEng project.
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Monday, 30 January 2012
The Domino Effect
When taking on a task, it's generally accepted that doing it right is always better than doing it over later. However, there are often limitations which mean that most tasks end up being done over later because you couldn't manage to do them right the first time.
Friday, 27 January 2012
A Man Needs to Build
It's true - I think just about every man needs to actually build something every so often. For me, this need was fulfilled today, with the construction of my prototyping assembly.
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Shhh! Be vewy vewy quiet - I'm hunting Power Suppwies!
Today has been a long day. I've spent just about all of it looking into a solution for powering the Mini-ITX board from a battery.
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Motor Control, Budgetting and SEPIC converters
I began today by thinking about motors and capacitors. Currently, the robot has no motor decoupling capacitors. Thinking about both EMI from commutation and the need for PWM to remain unfiltered, it's quite simple to figure out how big the capacitors are allowed to be. I'm aware that most DC motors are typically used with '104' ceramic capacitors (100nF).
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Hardware Homework, plus "Using the Right Tool for the Job" Lesson
This morning I actually looked at the gparted output from last week. The 1.93GB used on the disk looks very promising if the system is to be transferred onto a 4GB compact flash card.
Monday, 23 January 2012
Friday, 20 January 2012
Some Proper Engineering
Today involved quite a bit of planning of how I'm going to continue developing the robot.
The Gathering of Information
Today began with performing some basic measurements to verify some information that appeared in a past report, as well as some additional information.
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Interesting Installation
Yesterday, I failed to install Xubuntu on the Mini-ITX board when I found that the kernel was too recent and the CPU was no longer supported.
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
A Starting Point
Some Toys to Play With
I've had a meeting with my project supervisor, and acquired the robot and a box of extra parts that has already been acquired by past students. Looking in the box, there are several useful components:
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
In The Beginning...
Introduction
This blog will serve as a day-to-day summary of my work on a two-wheeled robot as part of my MEng degree in Electronic Engineering. Originally I intended to do video recordings, but used audio recordings instead when I couldn't find any simple software to do that. Since then, I've discovered how long audio editing takes.
So now, having completed about two and a half weeks of the project, I'm reverting to text, and rewriting all the information I've produced so far. Hopefully someone will find some of it useful. Anyway, on with the show...
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