Month: February 2019

Cell Culture & MATLAB Interfacing (pt. 1)

Hello!

So this is the reference article that I am basing my project off of. Since the Arduino MEGA/autonomous navigation code is not working properly and I don’t yet have a replacement for the former, my mentor suggested I begin working on the cell culture-MATLAB connection instead.

What the reference article does

Before I got started replicating what they did, I first had to understand it. Anyway, here’s a nice flow chart I drew up that describes how their ‘output decoding’ works: Continue reading “Cell Culture & MATLAB Interfacing (pt. 1)”

USB-unplugging Issue

Succinct update: stuff stops working after I unplug the USB cable. There wasn’t anything really helpful already in the Arduino forums, so I created a new thread.

Here’s a bulleted summary of what’s in there and what I’ve done since then:

To start
  • First response suggest that I’m only drawing 100mA from the 12V batteries unlike the 500mA from the 5V USB line. This could be the reason.
  • I mess around with the power supply (more to come) and then realize that I am supplying via a TURNIGY 5A SBEC that supplies a constant 5V and 5A. So that shouldn’t be a problem…
Next I look at where I’ve plugged it in.

From what I can recall, it’s always been plugged into pin A12 on the sensor shield v2.0, and I only remember changing it after I started having issues. So here’s where things get interesting:

Continue reading “USB-unplugging Issue”

Encoders (and a general update)

Hello!

The next step in my plan was finding a way to run Roomba in the background while the robot communicated with the neurons, but I’ve come upon a (really big) bump in the road: ‘Roomba’, which I wrote a couple months ago, is no longer working.

I’m not sure what it is that’s wrong… I thought it was the sensors, so I debugged those. Then I thought it might be the battery, so I soldered up new ones of those. Then I thought maybe it was delay variations caused by the new (fully powered) batteries, so I finished testing the encoders (see below). Now–according to the Serial Monitor–it looks like the Arduino is just getting stuck somewhere in the code, leaving the motors running to just ram into things??

So back to encoders. I think it might help with the ramming-into-things if I rewrite the code so that it moves forward one rotation, then checks the sensors instead of the way it’s working right now…?

Continue reading “Encoders (and a general update)”