Automated Medication Dispensing Device, RERC
Week #3, February 6, 2006
Jacquelyn Masse
Work Completed:
Wanting to get started on LabVIEW, I read through the PDA module guide and took
notes on the different aspects of building, deploying, and running a LabVIEW VI on a Palm OS
target. I then learned how to surface solder and soldered the 2 stepper motor controllers to the
surface mounts.
Soldering the controller to a surface mount.
To understand how the controllers work, I printed the data sheets for the A3967SLB chip and
assembled the chip circuitry on a bread board. After cutting and tinning the 4 wires coming from
the motor, I used a multimeter to identify the orientation of the wires within the motor.
The schematics for the motor controller.
Tinning motor wires.
The circuit board.
I also registered for the Intro to LabVIEW Graphical Development Environment Seminar on
February 23 in Windsor and the Intro to PC-based Data Acquisition featuring USB Devices web
event on February 21 at 1 pm.
Future Work: My task for the next couple weeks is to program for the motors. Sample
programs have been found as student labs that LabVIEW distributes, which may help me in my
programming. If I finish programming, testing can be done using the circuit I made on the bread
board.
Project Review: This past week was rough. The cover to the pill compartment was not made
like I had planned. We will need to order a different material. We also ran across some problems
with friction on the cutter platform and Kevin had to redesign and rebuild it. Eva was not with us
during lab this week for personal reasons. We will need to put in some extra time this week to
catch up.
Hours Worked: 5