Week 4 - Spartan Superway Controls

This week, we began taking a look into the coding that was used on the previous bogie. Our main focus is to understand every section of the code, but with over 2000 lines of code it is proving to be difficult. We feel that it may be best if we break down the code and reuse only the parts that we believe we will need for the new Futran system.

Because we are not using the Hall Effect sensors anymore and instead implement RFID tags to signal when to turn, we began by looking into the RFID.h library and the MFRC522 guides. Overall, we were able to get the cards to be recognized in the serial monitor and were able to rewrite them as well. After achieving this, we created a quick script that would turn the LED on the Arduino on if the correct RFID tag was read, and light up another LED if it did not have the right data. We were successfully able to do so and with this information we will be able to program our servo for switching between different tracks. 

The next step is to understand how the XBee modules work and what information is communicated. We will begin setting up the Android emulator to our computers and hope to be able to get the phone app working. From there, we can see what needs to be changed to the code in order for it to work with the new Futran system.

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