Week of 3/17

During this week, I began to start work on developing my control system and adjusting my code. This all started by learning out how use a a joy stick. The main reason for learning to use the mechanism is because of its easy usability and ease of use for once the rover is fully built. After reading and watching some guides I learned that using the joy stick is actually very straight forward and quite simple. The main idea is that there are two different potentiometers assigned to an X and a Y direction. This then allows the user to create many different ways of controlling something.

Battery for previous project

Joystick

full setup

After finding a joy stick in the shop I quickly set it up. As it only used potentiometers, it did not require me to download or learn any new code. Shortly after I was able to print the characters I began work on transmitting the data to the receiver. At first, I ran into many issues. Instead of printing the analog values it would print random numbers. After doing more research I was able to find that the issue was with how the data was being sent. Instead, I reorganized the variables into an array, which completely fixed the issue. After the other main goal this week with joy stick was to use it to control a motor. After coding and doing lots of trouble shooting, I was able to send a successful signal to the motor and it was able to work. The only other problem I face currently is how to get the motor to be controlled off of analog values, as currently it only works after using the "digitalWrite" function. For Friday, I hope to turn my attention briefly to my old project as I finally received the battery and adapter and hope to finally assemble the completed design and use it.

Images of code (unable to paste): https://docs.google.com/document/d/19TAAmbfbq3c2cfm1RlxcfAlx_1xaF6p8G0HMhL3RsXc/edit?tab=t.0