Dara’s Blogs

This month was the month where all our efforts finally paid off, We completed the 3d print and the line following code, afterwards we went on a short Easter break. After the break, we were able to complete the combat following code and we started on the special feature, and our special feature was screens with visual images that would change as the mouse moved or changed positions. Unfortunately, we could not get it done in time for our Technical inspection in Greygnog, as it was difficult to add the screen code to our combat code without breaking it. I think we did a great job working as a team,even though we didn’t get the best results.

We are getting close to the end of the project and after coding for the micromouse to follow obstacle avoidance and a white line . We noticed the micromouse was still not moving as planned so we had to a number of testing for the infrared sensors and for the input signals as well, there was a lot of soldering and re-soldering on the PCB, the infrared sensors and the white line circuit. It did take a while to find the error as there were many little errors on the PCB, the signals on the board for the motor and the sensors, but we were able to get them fixed luckily with the help of our technicians and Dr Timothy Davies. Also this month we finished the solidworks for our shell and we sent it for printing with the 3d machine. We are kind of in a rush to complete the micromouse as we want it to be good at combat and we are yet to conclude our special feature, so hopefully we finish it all before the trip to Greygnog. See you next month, Thanks for reading

We finished exams last month and we had a short break as well for New Years and Christmas so when we got back for the break, we had our PCBs printed and handed out to us, so Ethan started on it and did a good job soldering. I was giving a role of testing the circuit, and I noticed that the infrared circuit was not working on the PCB as planned so I had to desolder and resolder a few components like the lights. Andrew and I worked on the white light following as well and there were few protypes that ended up being completed and soldered by Ethan, because this month has been quite busy, there weren’t many updates on the website as I would have liked, as we were kind of short staffed. One of our Key members Rhys had to leave due to some unforeseen circumstances, so we all had to chip in to cover up for each other in one way or another. We are also getting close to the end of our micromouse because we have started the design of our shell, more details about the shell will be on the website, I was able to design the tail of the shell, as we are thinking of having a fox shell literally like our name lol. We are also getting our special feature stated soon as we found the components we wanted on amazon.

I think we have done a great job this month, considering so many discrepancies like being a team of 3 all of a sudden, I’ll see you all next month.

This month, we started building the PCB circuit so we could have the circuit ready for January for breadboarding for the main bits on the mouse, also last month we struggled to get the sensors ready because we had some issues with the coding, and we had not soldered the wires to the sensors, so the motor just kept spinning round without making any movement, but we managed to get it fixed with Doctor Davies’s help. This month we also completed the experiments on the raspberry pi board, although we work as a team and design the micromouse on the raspberry pi board, Doctor Jobling thought it was good idea to make us work in teams of 2 and do experiments on the raspberry pi board to give us more idea as to how it works and when we were done with the experiments ,we were able to fully concentrate on the micromouse.

After the experiments Andrew and I added a few more details to the website to improve it, if you take a look at the website, a few things that were not there last month was added, like the new pages in the menu, the news, engineering in society section and so on. We added some pictures and a short biography on all the members section too. And now we finally have a logo, a cute one at that. Check out the new section for more information and see you next month.

We got our team members last month and I was excited to meet them, we had to write our strengths before we were chosen as team members so when we formally met each other as team members we shared our strengths and skills with each other. I was a bit worried at first about meeting my team members, but I felt better and reassured once I met them in person. We then made decisions on our roles within the team using the team matrix as guide where I was then chosen as the manager and planner of my team. I wanted to do more than just lead so I supported Andrew as the Web master, and I am the Graphic Designer for my team.

As we started working on the project, a few things changed as we were still adjusting to our roles that we had chosen on our skill matrix, so we did work together at first on the breadboarding while Andrew waited with our module supervisor Professor Chris Jobling to set up the website. We also successfully submitted our first assignment as a team on time which made me really thrilled. Afterwards I started working on the website and I was able to set up the Home page on WordPress. We are all going to be posting our blogs individually every month so I’ll posting our progress on the micromouse every month.