Course Administration and Procedures
Guidelines, Rules and Procedures
Topic outline
- Course Administration and Procedures
- Day 1: Introduction to Mechatronics Course
Day 1: Introduction to Mechatronics Course
This is an overview of the system you are building for your first project. From day to day, you will be building each of the small components shown in the block diagram.
- Day 1: Digital vs. Analog and AC vs. DC
Day 1: Digital vs. Analog and AC vs. DC
Four part series from http://www.circuitdesign.info/blog/2008/06/analog-vs-digital-part-1-introduction
Pinouts, circuit diagrams, and other visuals that are helpful throughout the thermochamber project.
- Day 1: Soldering, Multimeters, Power Supplies, and Breadboards
Day 1: Soldering, Multimeters, Power Supplies, and Breadboards
Note: ONLY CUT USE THE BNC CABLES IN THE BACK OF THE ROOM THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN CUT FOR THIS EXERCISE!
1. Convert a BNC to BNC cable to a BNC to breadboard connectors
2. Create a DB9 female cable with breadboard connector leds connected to pins 2, 3, and 5 with colors as followed; red on 2, blue on 3, and green on 5.
Test your cables for continuity and resistance.
Power Supply Excercise
Set the voltage on the right variable power supply to 12 volts. Repeat on the left variable power supply. Measure both using a volt meter. Run red and black lines from each of these sources. Connect the line from the black port of the right amp to the red port of the left amp. Now measure the voltage across the right port of the right amp to the black port of the left line. Presto---you now have +12,"ground" and -12Volts.
- Day 2: Bits, Bytes, and Binary
- Day 2: Leds and Buttons, first time--the analog world
Day 2: Leds and Buttons, first time--the analog world
Select desired voltage drop and current of diode based on 1) desired light level (use LED spec sheet) and 2) power/voltage available from source (use sources spec sheet). You can fry both the LED and part of the source by making the desired current larger than the item allows.
- 1. Build a battery testing circuit (incorporating a resistor that uses a volt meter. Look on google for inspiration
2. Design a battery testing circuit that does not use a voltmeter (hint: idiot light). Look at the power point on lighting the LED with an Arduino for some additional help. Google it! there are some cool circuits out there. Constrain yourself to only items available in the lab
- Day 3: Intro to Arduino---Mega and Teensy
Day 3: Intro to Arduino---Mega and Teensy
Grab a Mega and a Teensy for your use this semester.
We are not using this approach for this course.
If you are interested in learning about microcontrollers and coding in Assembly and C, this would be good to look into.
- Day 3 and 4: Signal Generators and Oscilloscopes
Day 3 and 4: Signal Generators and Oscilloscopes
Experiment 1 - Look at Blinking LED on Scope
Experiment 2 - Connect Serial Cable From Back of Computer to Scope
In the DB9 drawer are cables that you can cutup. You might need to use a USB--DB9 converter to do the following. The purpose of the DB9 lab is to learn able terminal emulators (putty is an example), baud rates, ASCII codes and such. Look at all of the terminal programs options. After invoking utilize the DEVICE MANAGER to examine the serial adaptor configuration and then utilize the ascii code sheet and the scope to see the various binary codings. Go back into putty and set the Baud rate higher. Notice the smaller time width of signal. The standard BAUD rates people utilize start at a default of 9600 and go up and down by factors of 2---i.e. 4800, 2400, 1200 and 19200, 38400, 57600, 115200. Check these numbers out---see if you can get reliable serial communication at 1115200. Does your system need 1200 to work well?
- All About Serial
All About Serial
Now that you have written a fair amount of code for Arduino your code might start looking a little messy. A good way to keep your code neat and clean is to go to >Tools at the top of the Arduino environment and select Auto-Format. This will improve the readability of your code by making sure everything is indented properly.
- Day 5: Wall Wart and Power Supplies
Day 5: Wall Wart and Power Supplies
DO NOT OPEN THE WALL WART WITHOUT DISCONNECTING FROM POWER!!!
- Day 6: Disassembling a Power Supply and Conversion of a Power Supply to a Lab Supply
Day 6: Disassembling a Power Supply and Conversion of a Power Supply to a Lab Supply
View the video here:
We don't want you to disassemble a power supply because it could be dangerous, but if you did decide to do it remember to unplug the supply and discharge the capacitors by touching the green and black wires on the large ATX connector! We have added some photos from when we did it.
On the other hand you might wish to convert a computer power supply to a lab supply. Here are what others have done.
PLEASE DO NOT TAKE APART ANY WORKING POWER SUPPLIES. WE HAVE PLENTY OF SCRAP ONES TO USE FOR THE CHAMBER.
ATX Power Supplies
specifications, testing and conversion to lab power supply
Switching power supply have non-constant voltage.
Computer Power supplies are usually switching.
Determine the switching frequency using an oscilloscope (assuming oscilloscope has small enough time scale)
Switching power supplies are not necessarily the same as regulated power supplies.
What are wall warts?
- Day 7: Op Amps and Voltage Dividers
Day 7: Op Amps and Voltage Dividers
Very basic explanation of how ideal operational amplifiers work and can be used.
Be sure to do mostly everything in this Powerpoint. A common test frequency in the audio world is a 1000 Hz.
- Day 8: Measuring Fan Speed
Day 8: Measuring Fan Speed
***USE A 270 KOHM RESISTOR IN PLACE OF A 2.7 KOHM RESISTOR ON REFLECTIVE SENSOR***
Improving Set Point with Interrupts
We can use interrupts to detect whether or not a button has been pressed instead of constantly polling for a change. Below is some code that you can copy and paste into your existing code.
You need to determine the proper resistance value if this LED portion of the sensor does not already contain a resistor.
For link that is broken in powerpoint on page 13 refer to the IR Tachometer document and specifically page 6.
Be sure to keep this circuit as you will use it later in your system.
Check the gain of the resistors in your circuit.
*****Circuit Diagram for monitoring fan speed can be found under Day 17******
******WHEN WIRING REFLECTIVE SENSOR USE 270 KOHM RESISTOR IN PLACE OF 2.7 KOHM*********
- Day 8: Controlling fan speed
Day 8: Controlling fan speed
The fading tutorial is in File>Examples>Basic>Fade
Remember diode orientation matters.
- Day 9: Chamber Construction 1; Wire Harness
Day 9: Chamber Construction 1; Wire Harness
Note that one board should be a large bread board and one should be a small one. The exterior board should be large as it will have to contain lots of wiring, buttons, and a display.
- Day 9: Chamber 2; power, light and relay
- Day 10: Chamber 3; powering circuitry
- Day 11: Chamber 4; LED, button
- Day 11 and 12; Chamber 5, controlling relay
- Day 13: Chamber 7; temperature sensor
- Day 13 and 14: Chamber 8; graphing with processing
Day 13 and 14: Chamber 8; graphing with processing
*Or with MATLAB. The goal is to visualize data collected by the Teensy/Arduino in pseudo-realtime
- Day 14: Chamber 9; LCD display
- Day 15; Chamber 10; adding set point
- Day 15 and 16; Chamber 11; graphing set point in processing
- Day 16: Chamber 12; 3 LEDs
Day 16: Chamber 12; 3 LEDs
Project 1: selection criteria review and suggestions
- Day 18: Chamber 15; simple temperature control
Day 18: Chamber 15; simple temperature control
Project 2: Selected project, requirements, constraints
- Day 19: Chamber 16; additional temperature sensors
- Thermal chamber and Adafruit Huzzah ESP8266 example code and libraries
Thermal chamber and Adafruit Huzzah ESP8266 example code and libraries
After creating an account with Adafruit, you can access facilities on Adafruit.io to control IoT devices from the web and send data to the web. You should have the Arduino send data to the Huzzah via serial communication. This data is what the Huzzah sends over to Adafruit.io.
- Day 19 and 20: Arduino on web, ethernet shield; Project 2
Day 19 and 20: Arduino on web, ethernet shield; Project 2
Find google's ip address by opening command prompt and typing: "ping google.com"
- Day 20: Chamber 17; Xively, data to web
Day 20: Chamber 17; Xively, data to web
When someone gets it works, please update the sample Arduino code
- Day 21: Chamber 18; settings from web, PHP and SQL, Project 3
Day 21: Chamber 18; settings from web, PHP and SQL, Project 3
Look at Getting to cPanel Instructions for login information.
In sample code anywhere you see 427access.com use ais.sites.lehigh.edu and for the site IP address replace 209,217,224,101 with 128.180.3.172 (the current IP address of the server). This address can be checked in cPanel on the left under "shared IP address"
- Day ???: Microcontrollers and AVR Butterfly
Day ???: Microcontrollers and AVR Butterfly
Software
Additional Help on Task at hand
Hardware Manuals and User Guides
Learn how to could a microcontroller in C. Ideas work on all microcontrollers.
- Day ????? Advanced topics, Possibly within Project 2
Day ????? Advanced topics, Possibly within Project 2
A tutorial for designing and simulating circuits in Altium.