Nayim – October Blog

I was assigned to group Delta, and I decided to take up the role of programmer because I find coding interesting. So far in the month, we have organised our group and made a planner using Teams. We also created a website for our micromouse and tried a experiment on the hardware and software sides.

Firstly, I completed all the micromouse lab experiments which are recorded in a lab diary. These experiments helped me to understand how the arduino will work with the other board components, which will be useful for the micromouse project. The main section of the experiment involved taking control of the motors for the micromouse by using phase width modulation (PWM).

Then, I helped to create a breadboard circuit which uses IR sensors and IR LEDs. The sensors will act as the eyes for our micromouse. A specific signal is sent from the IR LEDs and if a sensor picks up the signal reflected on either the left or right ‘eye’, the corresponding visible light LED will light up. This will allow us to expand on the micromouse with programming later to replace the LED with a function for the arduino. The circuit produces a waveform which is outputted to the infrared LED and the sensor also receives a matching waveform. This ensures that the only source of infrared light triggering the sensor is from the micromouse itself and not an external source. I tested the circuit and found that it functioned correctly.

Additionally, I completed experiment 6, which uses a prewritten code for the arduino, which allows the wheels to react when an IR sensor picks up an infrared signal. For now this is simulated by a button press which is connected to a pull down resistor. The pull down resistor ensures that the pin has an output value of logic 0, as the IR sensor will output a logic 1 when it senses the infrared light. The micromouse will respond to its left sensor detecting a wall or object and turn clockwise for a brief period, then continue as normal. The same is true for the opposite case, where the mouse will turn anticlockwise. I added a section of code for when both IR sensors detect a signal and the micromouse will turn clockwise until both sensors output a logic 0.

I think our progress so far is good and we are on track according to our planner.

Next blog – November