week 10 goals

Today, we caught up on the blogs and then have learned to code for our own motors with the relays. now we have to multiply this process three more times to make the other three motors work simultaneously. once we get this done we should finish this long project.

week 9 accomplishments

We managed to get one relay to move a motor one direction with some help from Michael.  It's also coded to be remote controlled so it can easily be transferred from breadboard to prototank.  This week we also managed to get a motor to move forward and backward remotely using 2 relays as seen in the picture.

week 9 goals

This week we are getting motor relays to use since we accidentally burnt our motor shield.  We decided against trying the shield again because we think it can't handle the amount of amps we are trying to pull from it, while the relays should handle plenty.  We plan on using a total of 4 relays for all 4 motors to go back and forward since 2 motors are always moving the same direction (each relay tells a motor to move one direction, so we only need 2 relays for each side).

week 8 accomplishments

We figured out how to make it move. We had it about 5 minutes from working efficiently. All we had to do was wire it nicely. We turned it on and it worked perfectly for about 5 seconds then spontaneously combusted. It turns out we tried to put more power than the motor controllers can handle. go figure!

Week 8 Goals

Because there wasn't enough power to move all 4 motors in our H-bridge design, this week we are looking to either find a bigger battery or come up with a new method of motor control.  We have larger batteries than the 9-volt we've been using so we should be able to make that idea work.  If we go with a different design it will probably use a motor shield.

Week 7 Accomplishments

This week we managed to get the H-bridge to work.  With help from our friend Michael, we wired the H-bridge to run 2 motors pretty well.  We tried to duplicate the wiring on the other side so we could run all 4 motors and it sort of worked.  There wasn't enough power to run all 4 so they all moved extremely slowly.

Week 7 Goals

This week we will start programming the tank to run all 4 motors.  Right now it's set to just move forward and backward at timed intervals.  Eventually, hopefully this week, it will be remote controlled.