Engr 415
Gems of Wisdom
Manufacturing
For the manipulator, we needed to pay more attention to design and manufacturing. When the manipulator was finished assembling and we started to test the motors, we noticed that the iron bars were rattling really loud due to the vibrations of the motors and holes made in the supports. We did not have precise tools to be able to create the holes in the design perfectly which we did not think about for manufacturing. We also did not account for vibration when designing the model and when picking materials, which was a mistake.
* vibration was reduced by adding cotton balls
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Use higher infill Density if structural integrity can be a problem
The first 3D print was at about 25% infill density and a normal grid pattern. However after removing the supports and trying to add the bearings for the metal rods the print broke. Higher infill density takes more time to print, and uses more material. However, it also increases the overall strength of the print. We just doubled the density and changed the infill pattern to hexagons with triangles to strengthen the print.
* Showing the same cross-sectional area
Circuit Design
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Avoid making a Circuit Schematic with every sensor before knowing how to code each sensor individually
This sounds like common sense now, but at first putting every sensor pin onto the Arduino mega was to help visualization of everything working as a whole. However, most sensors needed an extra resistor or change from analog to digital so it was just a waste of time and wouldn't do that again.
Troubleshooting
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Test hardware with the same microcontroller
In the middle of the project before the implementation of every sensor I was writing code on an Arduino Uno and then copy and pasting it to the Arduino mega. Normally this works but I was unaware about SCL and SLA pins being on different pins and this led to countless iterations of code for the MPU-6050 for no reason.
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Use jumper wires without detaching them
This helps in a number of different ways. It cleans up your circuit, makes it harder for one wire to get randomly unattached, and makes it easier to see if the wiring is wrong
