Week 14

Presentation day is on 8 November 2012 which is on UniKL BMI Industry Day. The 2 assessors for my project presentation is sir Zulkifli Mahmoodin and madam Siti Nur Amalia. Both assessors are from Medical Electronics and Electronics Engineering section.

All preparation were done including presentation sheet and poster which is compulsory items that needed for assessment. Research and revision were done on the poster during consultation with supervisor. The supervisor advice that methodology must be related and parallel with literature review and problem statement.

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Week 13

First PCB was failure because of many intermittent occurs within the board for unknown reasons. Several troubleshooting were done to find solution for the problems.
To avoid wasting amount of time, new UV board was used due to faster and simpler process required to finished the PCB. Also, with the new design, the connection of each components was simpler and separated to prevent any intermittent.

Next, the potentiometer was soldered and ready to be wired by using shrink tube to avoid messy connection or cut on the joints. The sensor holder was placed and positioned at the correct position in order to make it function and aligned. Finally, all mechanical structure and software are ready to be interfaced.

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Week 12

Breadboard failure discovered after several troubleshooting. It has many intermittance produced within the board.Action taken is buy new breadboard and reconstruct the overall circuit.
By using DipTrace software, the PCB layout can be produced without putting more effort to measure each components dimension to determined its own pin configuration.

Next step involve the cutting and etching of finished PCB which is need to be done carefully. During the inspection of each copper connectivity, a multimeter tool was used. After confirmation all the connection were correct, the drilling process can be done for further components placement and soldering.  

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Week 11

Through out this week, some unexpected error occurs with the LCD component.
It suddenly display some unknown symbol to understand. LED backlight still on and function properly.
Research on the internet and consultation with the supervisor were done, to find the solution for the error.
After 3 days of troubleshooting, the solution was found by consulting and findings during consultation with my friend.
It is because the declaration and connection of LCD pin must be parallel with each other in order to make it fully function.
Other works and development were delayed during this week, and need to re-plan to cover the loss of time.

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Week 10

For mechanical development, sensor holder has arrived from Kota Bharu through courier. Both sensor plate were checked thoroughly to make sure there is no error or wrong position of placement at mechanical plate.

After inspection process, 2 dimension hole were made on he main steel plate. These dimension were measured accordingly on sensor holder. And lastly, the overall circuit was sketched on Proteus software because it is more easy and simpler compared than by doing manually by hand.

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Week 9

For display, several testing were attempt to visualize for each function. There are to possible ways to visualize the the function, by using serial monitor or Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). All connection of each LCD pin were followed based on Arduino tutorial. The LCD function correctly as desired and supposed to be.

After consultation with co-supervisors, sir Zulkifli Mahmoodin and sir Hisham, they recommend me to use proper motor driver for high torque DC motor. So, I switch from L293D into L298N, which has different specification in term of current rating. Below are specification comparison between these 2 motor driver:

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Week 8

To design the sensor/potentiometer holder, I have discuss with my family relative to assist me in designing AutoCAD  2012 for sensor holder. All the dimensions were measured to make sure it is accurately measure the angle of ROM.
Using same material with mechanical, I decided to pick same thickness and material due to it's availability and sturdiness. These are pictures of sensor holder from AutoCAD software, showing the dimension, position and placement.

For motor driver, the L293D IC was tested to check the strength of motor torque to move the mechanical structure. But there are some minor problem, which is the prediction of current allowed in the motor driver when the DC motor on load. This prediction was based on L293D specification

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