Senior Design Team 7
GPS Homing Robot
ECE291 - Spring-Fall 2004

Weekly Report

Zachary Chaves (CMPE)
Phillip Johnson (EE)
Gregory Wilkosz (EE)

Week 11 – 11/12/2004

     The code for the GPS has been compiled error free.  Modifications and number processing operations are still needed but the basics are in place.  The functions are set up to return vehicle speed, latitude, and longitude.  The conversions from the character
string to numbers are still being worked out.  In the next week the GPS will be interfaced to the microprocessor for testing.  Having this set up and compiling correctly will give the GPS the chance to be ready for the display as soon as it is working.  On the hardware side, the GPS data output was analyzed with a laptop.  Greg and Phil were able to get the GPS to output coherent strings to a computer.  The latitude and longitude did not initialize and gave us incorrect coordinates.

     The drive system is theoretically functional, which means it works on the oscilloscope, but has yet to be tested on the vehicle.  Testing will begin Friday morning to ensure system works with the vehicle and its electrical circuitry.

     In the past week, work on implementing the LCD has occurred with no success.  The blocking point seems to be with the timer used to time the transmission of data to the LCD.  Work continues on the LCD while we also await a response from Zilog’s technical support.