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1. 

   crenn
   Moderator

   Well, things are quietening now for the moment, which should give me enough time to spend time finishing off the Wire library for general use. We've been using it actively in our project and I believe it's stable enough for a release. My apologises that it's been delayed.

   I've recently integrated 3 of these Voltage and Current Sensors (I call them VIS, http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10643 ) into the project so that we can see the voltage level of the battery and also the current draw of each of the motors. I'm also going to be trying to, over the weekend, to implement dual ADC sampling that has been developed in the forums.

   But you can say for the Maple Mini, As seen on TV!
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt-jVRvdG58
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruEvBooHrMo

   As for sunday, things didn't go very well. The board I designed, stopped working after I touched up some solder joints, and while diagnosing the issue, I accidentally caused a short circuit through the frame which melted the wires going to the board. Luckily the board was actually fine and the problem was traced down to a faulty solder joint on a via, on the ground line. I got a new board made which will prevent the problem occurring ever again and was also a bit smaller.

   Posted 4 years ago #
2. 

   crenn
   Moderator

   So this project ended last week after a presentation was done on it saying what was achieved and what wasn't achieved. Summary of end result: aircraft didn't fly and was not stable enough to fly.
   After my exam tomorrow, I'll be doing a large write up on my site introducing the project (as I never introduced the project on my site) and go through the project and the problems encountered in as much depth as I can. There is a lot wrong that shouldn't be, but I won't go into that in this post. I'll update this thread later when post on my website.
   Either way, after I finish my write up, that will be marking the end of anything to do with that project. I have a lot of other projects to work on which should keep me busy during my break (although I'm currently looking for an intern position which means I'll be busy during week days, if I get a position) and which should yield better results than this project.

   Posted 4 years ago #
3. 

   gbulmer
   Moderator

   crenn - Commiseration's, I am a bit sad to learn that things didn't go smoothly. I'll be interested to learning from your hard won wisdom.

   I did wonder how well the "Voltage and Current Sensors" worked. I wondered if they'd be fast enough to do "optimal" speed control of motors.

   Posted 4 years ago #
4. 

   crenn
   Moderator

   Well, the voltage and current sensors themselves worked fine and helped provide feedback on the battery voltage. The current part also worked but was not implemented in the final code. An ADC read takes 7uS, but I only updated those sensors every 20ms or so as I did not need a high update rate.

   Posted 4 years ago #
5. 

   gbulmer
   Moderator

   crenn - okay, I think I get it. I thought you might be using them to derive motor feedback by 'continuously' measuring motor current.

   Posted 4 years ago #
6. 

   crenn
   Moderator

   It might have been an effective method to control the motor speed, however, the problem is the equipment needed to measure all of these factors was not completed as the stand/mounting block was not completed.

   Posted 4 years ago #

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