February Blog-post - Accelerating Forward!

After exams, we returned to our project with full force! Adam and I started off the month prototyping the white line following circuit. Fortunately this was quite quick and upon success of testing, it was soldered to veroboard.

The next week, Duncan and I began work on our special feature, an ultrasonic sensor. This required a bit more work as it is made for use with an arduino board, something we couldn't use. We figured we needed a 555 timer chip and luckily found one lying around for us to use. With a little bit of tinkering, we got an output from the sensor. We then found out the scope and range of the sensor.

The following week, Ed and I were working on the special feature. We needed to convert the analogue signal to digital so that we could have a suitable trigger voltage and swing for the mouse. After this was built, we soldered it permanently to veroboard.

After soldering it, Ed and I kept tinkering with the components and code used for the ultrasonic sensor so that we found a suitable range. We found that the clock speed of the 555 was way too high, we changed some components and then the sensor worked!

#Anish