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TEAM TANK V.3.14159265359

BY:

FRANCISCO GARCIA

URIEL GUTIERREZ

OSWALDO LOPEZ

MIGUEL ORTIZ

PROJECT

INTRODUCTION

Started off with us just going on Google the day the project

proposal was due and looking for ideas.

Out of desperation we decided to do a tank!

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HARDWARE USED FOR

CONSTRUCTION

2 - 5v 4-phase 5 – wire Arduino stepper motors

Breadboard with sheet metal base extension and wooden mount for motor circuits

GPIO connector

2 – male – female jumper cables

Tamiya track and wheel set

Tamiya Universal Plates

Motorola Power pack slim 4000 power supply

Logitech webcam

Raspberry pi

PARTS

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FIRST MOTOR TEST

SOFTWARE USED

Python

• Pygames

• Curses

• Motion

• Scripts

• Bash script

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PULL-IN PARKING

SCRIPT

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PARALLEL PARKING

SCRIPT

DESIGN

The brain of the whole project is the raspberry pi

Through the ribbon cable the pi sends signals to the GPIO

which is connected to the breadboard

Which then sends the signals to the motor circuit boards

through the wires

Finally, the motor circuits send the signals to the motors

which make the tank move

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PROOF OF CONCEPT

Basic breadboard tutorial

UNIVERSAL PLATE WITH

EXTENSION AND MOUNT

The universal plate is just the plastic plate where the

hardware rests

Uriel was able to add an extension using sheet metal where

he was able to mount the motors

Francisco came up with the wooden mount where the motor

circuits are mounted

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GPIO AND SETUP

GPIO pins are connected using the breadboard, GPIO

connector and cables.

Specific pins are used to control motors

SOFTWARE HASSLES

There was a point of desperation

where we were about to give up as a

group, and drop the class!

Due to us not being able to control the

tank through our form of button

presses on the keyboard, but…

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SUCCESS!

The button press problem was solved!

Web cam is fully operational

Scripting works well with the tank

CURRENT PROBLEMS

The biggest problem with our current version of the tank is

the speed at which it moves

A smaller problem is not being able to stream the video using

the raspberry pi camera, which is why we switched to the

Logitech web cam

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POSSIBLE FUTURE

ENHANCEMENTS

Enhance speed

Third motor to control motor

Second raspberry pi to make camera streaming more

efficient

LED lights

USB missile launcher that moves in the same direction as the

camera

Night vision camera

Motion detector

LEARNING HOW A COMPUTER INTERACTS WITH EXTERNAL PERIPHERALS WAS VERY

GRATIFYING. FOR EXAMPLE THE PYTHON CODE INTERACTING WITH BOTH THE MOTORS

AND KEYBOARD IN ORDER TO MOVE IT. IT WAS ALSO GREAT TO SEE OUR GROUP GROW

AS A WHOLE AND FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET OVER OBSTACLES. WORKING AS A GROUP

FORCED US TO DEPEND ON EACH OTHER SO IT HELPED TO GET WORK DONE, SO

ALTHOUGH OUR FRIENDSHIPS WERE STRAINED THEN EVENTUALLY GREW STRONGER.

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THIS PROJECT WAS A HIGHLIGHT OF MY SEMESTER. I GOT TO REALLY DIVE INTO THE

BRAINS OF A COMPUTER AND HAVE IT DO WHAT I WANTED IT TO DO. NOT ONLY DID WE

WORK ON CODE BUT ALSO WE WORKED ON WIRING AND ROBOTICS. WE FINALLY GOT TO

IMPLEMENT PYTHON CODE. THERE WERE MANY TIMES WHEN THE GOING GOT HARD BUT

WHEN YOU FINALLY GET THE PI TO DO WHAT YOU WANT IT TO DO IT FELT AMAZING.

SEEING THE TANK DO WHAT WE HAD PLANNED TO DO FROM THE BEGINNING MADE ALL

THE HASSLES AND COUNTLESS HOURS WORKING ON IT FEEL GREAT. I’M ALREADY

THINKING OF WHAT OTHER PROJECTS CAN COME FROM THE PI.

IN THE BEGINNING I FELT GREAT ABOUT THE PROJECT, BUT AS OBSTACLES CAME AND

TIME SHORTENED I STARTED REGRETTING IT. HOWEVER, AS WE CONQUERED THE

OBSTACLES IT BECAME A GREAT LEARNING OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL OF US. I’M HOPING

WITH ALL THE NEW KNOWLEDGE WE GAINED NOT ONLY ABOUT LINUX, BUT ABOUT

WORKING IN A TEAM WORK ENVIRONMENT WE CAN GET THROUGH ANY OTHER RELATED

OBSTACLES.

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AS WE STARTED THIS PROJECT MY CONFIDENCE WAS VERY HIGH BUT AS WE SOON

FOUND IT BECAME MUCH MORE DIFFICULT. THE REASON FOR THIS IS BECAUSE WE WERE

STARTING FROM ZERO WITH NO REAL REFERENCE BESIDES THE INTERNET. HOWEVER WE

WERE VERY PERSISTENT AND WERE ABLE TO FIGURE THINGS OUT EVERY STEP OF THE

WAY. I LEARNED A LOT ABOUT LINUX, PYTHON AND WORKING IN A GROUP ENVIRONMENT.

WRAP-UP

It was a challenge at first, but for future projects,

assignments, or even team related work experiences, it really

helped us get out of our comfort zone

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THANK YOU FROM

TEAM TANK!