Andrew’s Blogs

During the end of January and the entirety of February, I programmed and installed the LDRs on the front and rear end of the micro mouse. Dara and Ethan made the circuits that connect to the micro mouse. The sensors are working mostly to normal, where some calculations need to be made to detect the white lines accordingly. Also, I was able to implement the basic program for the micro mouse’s combat mode, where it is able to stay within the combat region and attack endlessly. For the following month, I will be finishing the combat mode on the micro mouse while doing our special feature.

This month we had significant progress regarding the basic structures of the micromouse. Ethan and Rhys were able to establish the code of the micro mouse in order to run forward, reverse, and walk in another direction, avoiding the obstacle. I started working on the PCB that will be used to implement the infrared sensors circuit. The website has improved from last month, as Dara and I improved its structure, creating all the basic pages and placing them into the main menu. For the following month before Christmas, we will try to implement the remaining features that need to be created and also finish the design of the website. I will finish constructing the PCB layout so then it can be printed to be sold next year when we come back from holidays.

During this past month, we were building team exercises to find the most appropriate team members for our group project, where we would write our strengths so we could pair up with the appropriate people. Afterward, I met with the other group members that I am going to stay with for the year building the micro mouse. It was exciting to see how each of the team members had different and creative perspectives as we were discussing our roles in the team and what it can they could do within their desired roles. In the end after dividing the roles evenly, where I was assigned to assist Ethan with the hardware while being a Web Master with Dara, being its Administrator.

After the team was built, we were still adjusting to our roles, therefore, we decided to start to work on the infrared sensors for the micro mouse. During that, the website was created for us to document our work and our blog posts. At the end of the month, Rhys was able to finalize the infrared sensor circuit as me and . For the upcoming month we aim to finish the infrared sensors and have them calibrated and be ready to implement them into the base of the micromouse’s chassis.