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Week 4: Finalising Week

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  What was done in Week 4 Week 4 was used by the team as a problem solving week to solve some movement related issues the vehicle was experiencing which could have been caused by a number of different possibilities. Week 4 allowed full visual representation from the data that was stored in the SD Card into a heat map. Vehicle movement troubles  The autonomous vehicle's turning capabilities was becoming a minor problem. Left and right 90-degree turns was coming slightly under and over and the vehicle was not able to preform any turn when faced with rougher terrain. Although the minor overshooting of the turns may still be part of the final vehicle, the group was able to highlight the possible factors that could have caused it to occur. The first possibility that could have caused the turning issues, is the motors not receiving enough power. The L298N motor controllers contain transistors that can give a 1.4V voltage drop across each leg, which in turn decreases the overall volt...
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Week 3: X-Y movements co-ordinated with sample readings.

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  Week 3 Progress  The aim of this week was to separate from a group to two individual teams in order to firstly  understand then create code that can have the autonomous vehicle to stop and take samples along the programmed pathway while it has a position counter on the car that measures how far the car has travelled which would later be used on MATLAB to show the location on the heatmap. While in the other group was adjusting the CAD file to the final design and sending it off so it could get printed out. Sampling We had Brandon create code on the Arduino that would allow the (temperature name object) to obtain 10 samples of both temperature and humidity and then it would create the mean by adding the total temperature and dividing it by the amount of samples taken, this would be the value that would be added to the CSV and used in MATLAB. Movement and Sampling We started to look at increasing the tracking position of the car while it would increase in values based on t...
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Week 2: Project progress & combining functionalities

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 About week 2 The aim of this week was to get everyone's individual aspects of the project integrated and working together. For example we had one of the members of the group working on controlling the motors with the L298N controller and another member was working on the autonomous navigation around the animal enclosure (software). Amongst other elements we needed to combine which will be elaborated throughout the blog. Motor controls & Autonomous navigation  This week Brandon and Aaron looked to put into practice the algorithm for navigating the animal enclosure by calling the functions made to control the motors via the L298N. The general code to control the motors was figured out in week one by Brandon and a provisional code/plan of attack to navigate the enclosure was generated by Aaron. So, they both spent a session working together to tweak each other’s code and get them working together. The approach they have decided to use was a lawnmower pattern of covering the ...
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Week 1: Setting responsibilities, goals and making a start on our project

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About The Project  Our project aims to develop an additional tool to help combat the growing issue of antibiotic use within the farming industry, especially in the rearing of cows and pigs. You may find the following article by PETA an interesting read:  Read Here .  Unfortunately, animals can be very susceptible to infections for various reasons, but one in particular relates to the conditions in which they are housed. This concern arises particularly when they are not grazing, which is where our focus will be placed. We are looking to develop a product that can measure the temperature and humidity of animal bedding to help farmers manage bedding cleaning practices. High humidity and temperature are prime conditions for bacterial and fungal growth, so if we can detect when these conditions arise, we can help indicate when bedding needs changing and prompt a health check for the animals that have been enclosed within a specific pen. More information on bedding management ...
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Location: Liverpool L69 3BX, UK
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