Week 7: Simulations, Models, Soldering, and Programming

As planned, a CAD model of the character jump mechanism was modeled and sent to be 3D-printed. This mechanism functions by sitting on the lift and rolling from side-to-side on it; in front of the backboard is a seat for the servo. The servo can rotate a pair of gears, which let the figure placeholder and its accelerometer rise within a groove in response to a jump command. Pictures of these models can be seen below.

A front-angle shot of the movement mechanism; this is what the player will see

A back-angle shot of the movement mechanism; this section comes in contact with the lift

Additionally, a simulation was made using MATLAB to calculate the speed the obstacles would attain at the endpoint of a ramp, as constrained by the degree tilt of the ramp. A video looping this simulation can be viewed below.

The process of soldering the circuitry together began as well. A servo driver was purchased last week; this will act as a channel of communication and source of power for the five servos involved in the device, as the Raspberry Pi is not powerful enough to power the servos sufficiently. A progress picture of the soldering can be seen below.

Nick and Valerie soldering the servo driver

Once the driver soldering has been completed, the process of communicating between the Pi and the servos will begin. At this point, the Pi is connected to a wired network, which can then be remotely accessed via Secure Shell. While this is useful, a more convenient solution would involve the Pi connecting wirelessly to a network for completely unshackled programming. As such, this is one of the current secondary objectives. A picture of Andy writing the MATLAB simulation and Amndeep communicating with the Pi can be seen below.

Amndeep and Andy programming

However, regardless of the wireless or wired nature of the connection, as soon as the driver soldering is done and the servo driver is connected to the Pi, communication between the Pi and the servos can begin - which will be a substantial step forward.