Today the team spent the entire day devoted to the construction of the hovercraft. It took roughly 6 hours to complete the assembly. We received the parts we needed laser cut from acrylic today and also painted the foam we would be using yesterday in order to be ready to assemble today. With all of the parts printed or laser cut that we needed and all of the code finished we were ready to assemble.
The first thing done was to create the layout for the LED array we used for the hovercraft. The LEDs were soldered to long strands of hookup wire previous to today so creating the array would go as smoothly as possible. After the array was complete holes in the base board of the hovercraft were measured and cut. These holes were created for the lift fans used to inflate the skirt. The lift fans were installed after the holes were cut and their leads were wired and taped together. Next, a larger block of foam was carved out to serve as the tower for the push motor and fan to sit in. The push fan and motor were then installed to the motor mount and then into this tower and attached to the baseboard of the hovercraft. a picture of this tower as installed on the hovercraft is shown below.
The skirt was then applied and four symmetric holes were cut under the hovercraft base board to serve as the outlet for air forming the crafts cushion of air. The middle of this skirt was then pinned to the bottom of the base board because through previous testing it was found that a skirt designed in this way achieved the most efficient hover. The skirt design is shown below.
The first Arduino and Arduino holder then went onto the hovercraft. This Arduino was the controller for the led array. The array was then connected to the Arduino via a breadboard located along the side of the Arduino holder. The breadboard (and mess of wires due to all of the circuits connected to the board) is shown below. This picture features the competed breadboard with all circuits on it not just the LED circuit.
Next, the second Arduino was installed on top of the previous Arduino. This Arduino serves to control the LCD display. The LCD display was attached at the same time to the front of the hovercraft and the circuit was tested.The LCD display is shown below.
Next, the steering blade and base that were laser cut from acrylic were attached to the servo. The servo was then mounted into the 3-d printed servo mount. This assembly was then attached to the hovercraft baseboard directly behind the push motor and fan. This assembly is shown below.
The servo and push motor were controlled by the third Arduino which was installed onto of the other two. This circuit was setup and tested. Finally, the Arduino tower topper that was cut from acrylic was attached and the IR sensor tower the was 3-d printed was placed on top of that. The IR sensor was then hooked up to all of the boards so that they could read it and run the programs correctly. The four LEDs that are also onto of the IR tower were hooked into power. A photo of the IR tower is shown below followed by a photo of the stacked Arduinos.
After all of this assembly, the hovercraft was ready to be tested. A picture of the entire hovercraft as well as the video of the first test run is shown below.
A huge amount of work was completed on the project today and it is basically finished. All that is left to do is tweak a few parts of the code and connect a couple more wires and the hovercraft will be completed fully.
The hovercraft is easier to control that we originally thought and the propulsion from the push motor is exactly what we were expecting. Overall we are extremely pleased with the finished product.
Fantastic job....
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