The Systems Team is tasked with designing and installing all electrical circuitry and components, in addition to handling most programming and communications work. This includes the base station, autonomous operating logic, arm operations, and all electrical subsystems.
Members:
- Nathan Logston – Team Lead
- Gabriel Carlson
- Gabriel Folkedahl
- Akwasi Quarcoo
- Hunter Northern
- Nihaal Zaheer
From left to right: Nihaal Zaheer, Nathan Logston, Hunter Northern, Gabriel Folkedahl, Gabriel Carlson, Akwasi Quarcoo
Goals:
This semester, our goal is to take the new drive train created in Fall 2022, and improve the other features of the rover. This includes a drivetrain wiring to convert our current drive power system from 6 cell to 4 cell. The Spark MAX escs are only able to take the lower voltage, and a new wiring harness would allow the drive train to take advantage of a newer, higher amp draw battery. This will also shed a little bit of wire weight, as well as give us a chance to properly document the new drive-train. Once this is completed, we will move to properly implement the science system into the rover, adding it to the existing power harness and CAN bus. We would also like to enhance the functionality of the end effector by implementing an end effector camera that can be viewed through the rover’s interface.
Deliverables:
- A rewired power system for drive and systems
- New battery and box
- New wiring documentation
- Autonomous reimplementation
- Science System wiring and control code
- New End effector camera
- Base station camera viewer
Milestones:
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- Operational URC Science System (3/4)
- Basic Autonomous (3/4)
- SAR writeup (3/4)
Spring 2023 Recap:
This semester, Systems team has been working on a variety of tasks. We started the semester off by rewiring the rover’s power and CAN systems with high amp wire. With this new rewire, each suspension member can be removed independently and worked on individually. With this new rewire, we switched the battery system to a new 4 cell LIPO, which is within spec for the SPARK MAX esc’s we currently use. This 4s lipo is a parallel combination of two batteries, so if more capacity is needed, we can simply add more batteries.
We also focused on electrical and code documentation. A lot of the code that was written last semester has been commented for future team members. Our wiring is currently being documented with drawings.net, a tool that allows us to graphically represent the wiring with colorful diagrams. Each trace is labeled with a color and description of where it’s plugged into the rover.
We have started to work on the end effector camera, but we are having troubles sending digital data through our arm’s slip ring. We are considering switching to an analogue system, which is much more resistant when traveling through a slip ring.
Fall 2022 Recap:
This semester, the Systems Team has been working on updating and rewriting the previous drive code to support our new Spark Max ESCs (Electronic Speed Controllers) with built-in PID control, ramping, encoding, and CAN Bus support. In order to control these ESCs, we have written a completely custom library for sending the heartbeat, drive commands, and receiving encoding data from these CAN Bus connected ESCs. With this combination of new ESCs and new encoded BLDC motors, instead of just feeding a motor a specific power level, we can vary the power level to achieve the desired wheel velocity across all motors. This library will be used in our new drive system code, while some of the previous drive systems will remain for the newly updated arm, which now supports CAN bus using Talon ESCs. We have also begun construction on a newly designed base station, arm testing platform, and a new serial communication method between subsystems.
