Week 3_ 2/20/19

Dr. Furman told us that we are allowed a small space during Maker Faire and would have to shorten the length of the track. A couple of our team members when to the courtyard at SJSU where the half-scale track was being held and found that there is a part that can be easily sectioned off. We will keep 18ft of the track including the slope and y-junction. The legs will also be cut to around 4ft so that the bogie will just hover over the floor.


This week, I found a pair of Xbee modules in a box while looking through an unclaimed cabinet brought from the old warehouse. With the 2 S1 edition modules was also an Xbee shield which will be used to fit onto the Arduino.  

Looking through the Sparkfun website where the Xbees are sold, shows that the module takes in 3.3V and 50mA. The range of the Xbee is 300ft which will be able to accomplish our goals. 

XBee 1mW Trace Antenna - Series 1 (802.15.4)SparkFun XBee Shield
Figure 1. Xbee module                       Figure 2. Shield for Arduino 

It was found that it could have been the Small-scale team's tools, but they said we are allowed to use it. More research is being done on the Xbee. But we will need to purchase 2 mini USB to USB cables and 2 Xbee explorer units to test the Xbees.


Figure 3. Xbee Explorer


A short beginning tutorial on how to set up the Xbee can be found in the link here:

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/xbee-shield-hookup-guide?_ga=2.132346503.841101534.1558489646-1921239942.1551393863

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