Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Status update!

All right.

So far I've got everything but the plastic transport from ramp-to-VUK in place, including servos, motors, lights, switches and solenoids. Meaning, I've more or less finished the machine.

What I didn't expect (well, should have...) was that my crappy soldering of the Chipkit USB port would come loose, so now I can't program the board. I'm rather fed up with it so I'll just order a new Chipkit Max32, move wire by wire to the new board and hopefully don't break anything else in the process.

Before moving the USB cable, and ultimately breaking the port, I managed to get the servos and motor up and running in code, as well as the accompanying diagnostics menu for them.

Here's some videos for a change!



Fantastic!

In the videos everything just goes on/off in an instant. The final version of the code will of course feature speed control and less jerky, smoother movements. The idle light sequences are just placeholders as well (i.e random lamp lights up) and will obviously be replaced when the new board is up and running.


I've also noticed that the magnet doesn't work anymore, and by measuring the port it would seem that the port is indeed broken (regardless what I've previously said...)


So, up next is:

1) Making the transport section. Don't know why I've not done this part already...
2) Checking the magnet driver port. The port is broken, will order a new board for this unless repairable.
3) Order and replace the Chipkit.
4) Beautify the playfield - attach top plastic overlays. Not critical and might be skipped completely, actually.
5) Tilt blobbin'. Also optional. We'll see about this.

Then - I can finally start coding the ruleset!

No comments:

Post a Comment