This is the final post about the rover, I promise. In addition to the changes made to the electronics box, we also needed to get data from the wheels. Each wheel is a self contained unit with a battery, motor, and speed controller, which is sent pwm signals from the mbed. We needed to get the power draw from each wheel and this is the board I designed to do it.
Tag: PCB
Rover Controller
In another episode of clearing up old projects, here’s a controller I made for the rover that acts as an emergency override and also allows somebody nearby to drive it around. The rover is typically controlled over the internet but there are times you may want to be able to control it without the internet, including when the internet connection is down. Any signal from the controller also overrides the signal from the internet user so it can be used as an E-stop.
Rover Electrical Systems
Last summer I started working with the rover team to modify the rover to be used for another research project. The original rover did extremely well at the competition but they were working under tight time restrictions and almost all of the work was done by undergrads. That meant there was a lot of work needed to fix and modify it.
SAMRAMP PCP Design Timeline
My Master’s research involved sensing the environment using a UAV or “drone”. Do do this I needed some method of reading sensors, logging data, and transmitting it back to the ground station. This post shows the three different designs I used and talks about them a bit. I’m not expecting this to be a super popular post but just want to document it so I can get it out of my brain.
P Channel Mosfet – High Side Switch
Here’s my schematic and board design for a simple high side switch using a P channel mosfet. It’s a simple circuit that has a input for positive and negative and an output for positive and negative connections. Pretty self explanatory. It seems like every time I go to work with mosfets I have to spend a good 5-10 minutes reminding myself how they work. So here’s a reminder to myself for the next time I go looking.
The Wandering Engineer 