Week 9
Output Devices
This was a very similar week to the previous week, in that we made a simple output device. Instead of using an LED like last week, this week, I worked on making a servo or a motor that would be used in my final project.
****UPDATE: I fixed this and got everything working in Week 11!****
Using the files (traces and outline) from Neil, I was able to first mill the servo board. I thought that I would only need the servo and not the motor because I didn't need a wide range of motion, and only needed to pivot about 180 degrees. After milling and stuffing the board, I tried to program the board. However, I ran into some problems. As you can see, what is powering my board is a wire that was made by hand; I have found that when I run into the problem in which the Arduino does not recognize/see the USB port, it is usually the problem that the wire is not able to trasmit data. I tried to program this board, but it just ended up not working.
This is something that I would really like clarification on...
I decided to make a new board with something else that would not require me to make my own power cable. I made the unipolar board, but after some mishaps (the board actually came off the bed of the mill), I found David! David made an extra board and I was able to use that one. He had some issues with soldering his board (regulators and transistors look too similar!!!), but I was able to solder quickly and we both worked on programming my board.
We ran into some issues with figuring out how the wires should line up for the motor, and I don't think we were ever able to really resolve this. However, we did get some shakiness. We tried to look up the certain motor and figure out how the wires should be connected, but we didn't get the motor to do what we really wanted it to do. Next time, hopefully we can figure this out!'
Check out the video!