5/6/2019 Week 6 Update

Lecture day 5/6/2019: During lecture, the group asked the TA about how the Adafruit MotorShield is supposed to be used with the Arduino. He pointed us towards an online resource and the Week 1 Lecture slides for guidance. Additionally, he showed us how to connect the Arduino and the Adafruit MotorShield by using the male-to-male pins that we given with the Adafruit MotorShield.

Fig. 1 - Setup Image given in Week 1 Lecture Slides

Through this new information, we determined that the Adafruit MotorShield should be soldered to the pins (see Fig. 1):

Fig. 1 - Pins to be soldered (including opposite side pins)

Upon further reading through the Week 1 lecture slides, Joseph and Benedict found out that we will need a power cable in order to power both the Arduino and the Adafruit MotorShield (see Fig. 2):

Fig 2 - Power Connector (on right of image) of Arduino

 As seen in Fig. 1, the female pin connector on the motor's wires will be incompatible with the future setup. The wires of the motor (see Fig. 3) will be snipped and stripped to fit into the female press connectors (see Fig. 1):

Fig. 3 - Female pin connector for the 5V motor

To-Do-List for Lab Day:

Get Power cable for Arduino in Innovation studio.
Snip the Motor connector and strip wires
Solder Adafruit MotorShield V2 and Arduino Board together
Test code with the above done

Lab Day 5/8/2019: During Lab Day of Week 6, Benedict and Joe got to work on the Control Code. Upon attemting to get the motor spinning, we recieved a specific error:

****TODO: insert copy of error here****

We believe that this error was caused by a poor connection between Analog Pin 4 and 5, which are the output pins of the Arduino code. This problem has possibly been resolved by soldering the pins to the Adafruit MotorShield (see Fig. 1):

Fig. 1 - Analog Pins soldered to connector plugs

Fig1.1 - All pins soldered in place

Additionally, Benedict also reinforces the wire tips with leaded solder for a better connection to the clamp connection points of the Adafruit MotorShield (see Fig 2.). This should also rule out the flimsey wire connections as possible faults in the circuit.

Fig.2 - Reinforced wire tips