Overview of today's meeting, 11/12/2013

Okay,

After today's meeting, it's been decided that a pontoon boat will be our project.

Image and link for the pontoon have been included.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_VSyj8G9gx1NzQwVTVyTjA1ZWs/edit?usp=sharing


Here is the image:

  

Today's Meeting:

Today, it was our plan to come to the meeting each with our own individual concepts. 

William brought in a great idea regarding a working pump system. His concept was to take two tanks, a pressure sensor, and an arduino system to control the amount of water in the holding tank. A user would be able to input a level of water and it would set to that level. A user could take some water out and the pump and the system would refill what was removed. 

Mike came in with his idea where a stepper system would track and relocate towards or away from light. This system would utilize the light sensor, a stepper motor, the arduino system, and some solidworks designed parts. His concept utilized a circular center with the 4 sensors extending at every quarter point. 

The final idea utilized the lego pontoon system shown above. The idea was to create a working toy boat system. This project requires a 2D cut out which could be used as the connection between two pontoons and a uniquely designed hull  that would house the arduino system, the stepper motor to regulate steering, the motor for the drive system, an LCD screen that displays current battery level and possibly other information, a working light system on the front and back as in standard boating systems, and will be connected via bluetooth control system and connected to an iphone and hopefully android system as well. 

The drive system was discussed extensively. A gear-driven drive system was mentioned. A horizontally directed drive line was discussed. Final conclusion was the latter. 

As discussed, by this Saturday 11/16/2013, our designs will be posted for the connected systems. All comments are appreciated. 

The final decision will be made on 11/19/2013 regarding which design will be used in the final project. The coding arrangements will be decided upon more at that meeting. 

(https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/152 - This is the link to the iphone control walk through. It does work. I was just playing with it.)

Till next time, be well.