04.6 - Final Demonstration
Demo day was full of excitement and many hours of debugging. Here’s the story…
We began the day fixing issues from days of prototyping and debugging. We started with swapping out our Arduino Uno after frying one of the resistors on the board. Our software and electrical engineering teams were tuning out PID controller for pitching and rewiring pushed voltage back to the Arduino Uno shocking a team member badly. That team member felt bad and brought pizza for the group.
After swapping out our broken board, the team was back on track. Unfortunately, one large issue remained. The power of the motor (taken form the previous assignment) was too low and was under powered in pitching the wiffleball.
We found one solution by lengthening the link length of the pitching arm we could increase the speed in the ball given we have enough torque to move the length. Taking a piece of acrylic, we were able to do just that and achieve the speeds we needed.
Continuing to refine our design and software until the last demonstration, we were able to achieve our goals of pitching in various modes culminating in our final demonstration video.
The presentation period went smoothly as we talked with classmates about our project, its purpose, design process, and let them swing at the pitches from the machine.
Our presentation with Professor Petlowany and Teaching Assistants went very smoothly with our presentation materials, working design, and people able to hit a wiffleball pitch.