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

Weekly Report

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

Week 13 – 12/3/2004

     The digital compass and drive system were successfully combined last week over Thanksgiving Break.  The vehicle constantly attempts to head north with the way we set up the code for testing.  The digital compass seems to get hung up on north-east whenever it crosses it.  We believe that this is not a problem with the software, but rather with the compass sensor itself.  We are going to swap out the current sensor for the spare that we have.  As far as the GPS, we know for a fact that the GPS receiver is working and is outputting valuable data.  An estimated accuracy of at least 10 feet was achieved.  There are still difficulties in extracting the useful data that we need to navigate to a destination.  The entire group will take a closer look at the GPS code the morning of Friday 12/3/2004.  Almost everything hardware-wise is set up for the vehicle.  The majority of remaining tasks are software-related.  At one week from Senior Design Day, we believe we are on the right track for finishing the project in time.