ELECTRICAL - HOVERCRAFT
Power Management
We used two 7.2V NiCD batteries on our hovercraft to power all components. The motors (drive and lift) ran directly off of 14.4 volts. We regulated the 14 volts down to 7V to power the Tiva, popper motors, and Arduino. Many of the other hovercraft circuits run off of 3.3 or 5 volts; those came from the Tiva and the Arduino, respectively.
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Lift Fan and Servos
We switched the lift fan with a power FET. We put a buffer in between the FET and the control indicator servo and the Tiva. In the case of the FET, this was to improve the switching speed and keep the FET out of the linear region, where its power dissipation is higher. The buffer and the servo ran off of the 5V pin from the Arduino.
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Popper Motor and Rack and Pinion Motor
We used the same L293 board from our 218B project to control both the rack and pinion mechanism and the DC motor that spun our "popper". Both motors ran off of the 7V from the voltage regulator, although in retrospect we should have ran them off of the unregulated 7V from the first of the two batteries in series.
Only the rack and pinion motor needed to run in both directions; the popper motor was unidirectional, so we tied one input to ground and the other to a Tiva I/O pin. |