Shane’s Log: Monday 10/2/2006 We took a look at how the hummer is currently wired. Since there is no documentation (that we know of) on how the hummer’s control system is wired up, our next step will be to go to an engineering lab and then test and document how we can make the hummer move by injecting varying levels of power to pins on the control board that came with the hummer. Wednesday, 10/4/2006 We went to an engineering lab to inject power to certain pins that the previous researchers had plugged into. This is a black object in the center of the board that came stock with the hummer. We arbirtrarily named the pins. When we completely decipher the control of this chip, I will include a pin-out. For now, I will say that we found applying a minimum voltage of .8 V to "pin 9" makes the hummer go forward. We applied up to 3 V. Pin 4 makes it go in reverse. We could not figure out how the turning worked. Applying voltage to pin 2 caused the wheels to jerk repetitevely, but not actually turn. We want to get ahold of the previous researchers to find information on this. Dr. J is going to e-mail Matt Baur, and Mike is going to send an e-mail to Dan. Monday, 10/9/2006 We got an e-mail from Dan. He could not remember what pins did what, and pointed us to the blue file cabinet where there would be papers on the hummer project. I searched through every file in the file cabinet but did not find anything about the hummer. We are not able to decipher the control board, and without any help or documentation form those that originally pulled it apart, we are seriously considering bypassing the hummer’s PCB board and interfacing directly to the hummer’s motors for turning and steering. We did some testing on these motors. For the turning motor, we applied 5 volts to one wire and 0 to the other. This resulted in the motor turning the wheels all the way to the left or right. At that point, I am assuming the motor simply stalls out. This chart shows how the turning works: Turn Right Turn Left Brown Wire 0 V 5 V Black Wire 5 V 0 V The forward/reverse motor works the same way: Forward Reverse Brown Wire 5 V 0 V Black Wire 0 V 5 V Wednesday 10/11/2006 We found out that the motor for the turning wheels is a servo motor, and the motor that turns the wheels in the rear is a DC Motor. We will need to bypass the hummer's control board because we could never discover what control signals it needs, and it is possible that we have damaged it in our guesswork. We need to control the motors directly, but we are not sure if the our robot boards can provide enough power to the motors (we are pretty sure that we can't). If we do bypass the original hummer board, we will need a sort of switch-relay system to connect the power from the battery pack to the motors. There are some good ideas how to do this at the URL. On Friday: Test original hummer board, and find out how much current the motors draw. Wednesday 10/18/2006 Matt Baur, a former research team member who worked on the Hummer project, came in and showed us some much needed documentation. We now don't need to worry about bypassing the Hummer's board, and we have somewhere to start with on what to actually send those pins. We spend today going through his code and trying to intall it onto a BYOR (Build your own Robot) board. As we verify their documentation, I will make an electronic version of their findings and post them to my research directory. Monday, 10/30/2006 We have now used the BasicX editor to program the BX-24 to cause the Hummer to move forward, in reverse, and turn left and right. One major problem we ran into was what that the Basicx programmer had certain initial conditions set to the pins, so the wheels of the hummer were always turning regardles of what we had progammed. So far, we have only had the hummer drive at full speed. At this point, I will make a pinout in PDF format of all the connections from the Bx-24 to the BYORK I/O pin bank to the chip which we have tapped into on the hummer. Monday, 11/06/2006 Today I finished up the documentation that I mentioned in the entry from 10/30/06. I have placed two files in a research log sub-folder called oldhummer. It is named oldhummer becuase it represents the way the Hummer was wired before this semester's team made any changes. They have the same content but are in different file formats. I built the file using a program called Dia (for windows), and then converted it to a PDF. hummerchip.dia hummerchip.pdf I also looked a little bit into GPS stuff as a possibility for the Hummer. GPS Receivers: $100 for a 10 m range http://www.usglobalsat.com/category.asp?catid=4 $120 for a 10 ft range handheld http://www.thegpsstore.com/Detail-Garmin-GPS-72-Handheld-GPS.asp accuracy of GPS Receivers http://www.romdas.com/technical/gps/gps-acc.htm http://www.gpsnuts.com/myGPS/GPS/Technical/gps_receiver_accuracy_by_c.htm Monday, 11/13/2006 Today I tried to use the labs upstairs to measure the pulses we are sending to the forward and reverse pins. Basically, I want to test the sleep command and also the pulse command to be sure we are pulsing the amount that we think we are, so we will be ready to take that into consideration when programming in a different envioronment. I had trouble getting into labs because of classes, but I have a laptop set up to continue this testing on Wednesday. Monday, 11/27/2006 I am going to hold off on the oscilloscope testing for now. I have been working with Mike in ordering supplies. We have finished for now, and will soon submit a parts list from the Jameco catalog to Dr. J. We are holding off on ordering an oscilloscope. We are thinking of buying and Instek GDS-820C, they are in the $1150 - $1450 price range. The other option is to go with what seems to be mostly used everywhere, which is the Tektronix TDS 420 series. Wednesday, 11/29/2006 Today I made a repair on the BYORK board in the hummer. A small 3-pin IC had been fried over thanksgiving break so I replaced it with one from our already fried "spare parts" board. It seems to be working now. I also helped Mike with the paperwork to finalize our order with Jameco.