You Do not MESS with ELECTRONICS!

90% of our pathfinder project was completed. Rest 10% was testing phase. We had one day before our final presentation. Kinda happy that robot no more looks like a piece of junk. Then, there came a the biggest tornado in my life. The biggest Tsunami. The worst  horror of my life. Guess what? There was a short circuit while we were working with the robot trying to test it. I could not believe it happened and was in shock that after so much of hard work the whole thing might not work at all because there was a small mistake with electronics. There was a thick smoke and the burnt smell. I pulled the plug, and checked if arduino was dead. It was working fine. The dc motors of both rear wheels and front wheels were working fine. To the worst of all the Servos were the one who went dead. Not one but all three on the hand. I opened up the servos to check and see if there was anything I could fix, but i could not find anything. And ordering new one was out of question, since we were already out of budget. This type of accidents are kinda normal when working with projects which use lots of power source. Honestly, I never really cared about electronics . I always tried to make it just to work with project. The simplest one I could make. But after this not only I realized that electronics is a bitch and should be handled with  most care, I also realized that last minute checkups and testing should be done using a back up. Always have a backup plan. Plan B or the exit door. I hope no one else will get the same fate as this project got.

What next?Well, Every baby who tries to walk falls down in a while. But you never actually learn if you are not willing to rise again and try walking again and again until you have perfected it, you will never learn to walk. The project is not destroyed yet, although our grades might get really low. I have a whole summer ahead of us and I will try my best to work on this again and take this project to 100% success!!

“It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”
― Franklin D. Rossevelt

 

The Complete Look

Here it is, long we have been waiting for this. Finally after a semester’s hard work and lot of failures we have completed the hardware integration the most recent one being the claw addition. All the modules, the tires, the servos on hand are working as per our need. Circuit part is more or less done as well. Drivers are giving very good performance and the hand is well coordinated by servos. The only thing left to do now, is to complete the code we had written about 2 months ago. The code needs to be integrated and needs more debugging. This is not the final look, there are bit of finishing touches to be done like making the wiring clean. We will also shortly post a video of our work showing how all components are working.

Sideways look

Pathfinder

Robotic hand fitted !

Claw part

Electronics

Bit of untidy wirings

front look

Hand rotated

rotated hand

Pathfinder

Pathfinder