Week 5

In the final week of the project, my team worked on getting the motor run in both the directions.

Firstly we went through the Kelly controller manual to figure out how to configure the controller so as to run the motor in both directions.

The controller had the pins for forward switch and a reverse switch, which needed to be enabled in the software. After configuring the software the motor ran in both the directions.
Now to do this task wirelessly I used a relay module which was normally connected between the Forward switch and the RTN pin of the controller and on receiving a signal from Arduino 2560, it would close the connection between Reverse Switch and the RTN while making an open connection between the Forward Switch and RTN.

The joystick code was modified to utilize the switch in the joystick to toggle between the Forward drive mode and reverse drive mode.

A  enclosure for the joystick was designed and 3d printed.

Finally everything worked wirelessly now.

On the last day I worked with the other teams to integrate all the components to work together, and the whole project was successfully completed.

The bogie now equipped with the motor driver along with power supply taken form the wayside team's pantograph system and a suspension for the cabin designed by the suspension team moved forward and in reverse on the tracks designed by the track team.

Overall it was an amazing experience to work with other teams to bring the project from designs to reality.

Week 4

This week I focused on getting the motor work wirelessly by using a pwm signal from an Arduino 2560 and giving the signal to the throttle input of the motor controller.

The Arduino 2560 received a signal wirelessly from the joystick connected on the Arduino Uno.
On receiving the signal, equivalent pwm wave is given as input to the throttle of the motor controller.

I could successfully implement this and the motor now worked wirelessly!
Next goal is to get the motor to rotate in both clockwise and counterclockwise direction.

Week 3-

This week I focused on getting the BLDC motor to run.
After going through various documents, the official manual from Kelly controls, and Kelly controls technical support (Fany) who was super helpful, the motor ran for the first time.

There were many changes made using the Kelly controls software and the updated settings were flashed onto the controllers.

The motor finally worked, also the motor controller's green led was faulty as it flickered initially and then turned off, this was misleading everyone to think that there was something wrong with the controller, but we were lucky that the controller was fine and working properly.

There was issues with the throttle as well, which when replaced by a potentiometer (connected to the throttle input of the motor controller ) ran the motor at full speed.

Week 2 :


Researched on how to wire a stepper motor with eight leads to the a L298N motor driver. Initially ran into issues as to how to connect multiple wires of the stepper motor together for it to work with a motor driver that only has 4 outputs. After searching the internet for wiring diagrams, the stepper motors' company website had exact wiring diagrams. Using this the stepper motor was running and later got it tested with he wireless setup and that too worked perfectly !

I also worked on the linear actuator to get it to function. The green linear actuator is broken while the black one is functional. I used a simple code to see if the actuator can go in and out, but for some reason it did not work. Then two hours later, the actuator worked with the same exact code for some odd reason. Now, I have to work with the other team to incorporate the hall sensors and synthesize a code to make the linear actuator carry out the desired application.

Full Scale Controls Improvement

Week 1:

First week in the Full Scale Controls Improvement team was a design week, the whole team focused on getting the  joystick and wireless transceiver to work with Arduino.

We ran into several issues as the wireless module would sometimes suddenly stop working. After troubleshooting the wireless module, we were successfully able to interface a analog joystick and transmit a its readings wirelessly to another Arduino board.