Hardware and other shenanigans: An initial step in design choice

Thanks to our industry sponsors, Texas Instruments, we can finally begin the retrofitting process of our autonomous vehicle. Our hardware line-up consists the likes of the BeagleBone Black, TI CC3200 LaunchPad and other tools we will address in this blog update!

Firstly, we would like to address the fact that both our team-members, John and Ross, had went to Taco-Bell during our last weekly meeting without other members. With this out of the way, we can proceed with why we chose our specific components.

Single Board Computer – BeagleBone Black

Serving as the controller for our motor components, as well as the receiver/processor for our information sent by our MSP430 and CC3200 units, the BeagleBone will be the ‘heart’ of our vehicle.

Microcontrollers – MSP430 (Value Line and FR 6989)

Our MSP430 controllers will be used as the receivers of our IMU and Front Sensor data. This includes collision, angular velocity, position and level information.

Wifi- CC3200

Acting as our Wifi module, the CC3200 will be the means of communication between our vehicle and any external devices for location information. We aim to use the CC3200 to give the vehicle awareness of its location as well as, through the use of a mobile device, the estimated time of arrival for the end user.

With the arrival of our sensory components in the near future, and our 1/8th scale car, we will have all the parts needed in order to have a draft vehicle to program and debug until next semester. Thanks for reading, and we hope to have an update following the software development of these products within the next two weeks!