Learning Process

Learning process

On the final day, our buggy didn’t show any activity which was a disappointing. It was reacting slow but at least it was reacting on the day before. There were still some flaws with the final program which Hani thought of although as Dr Gareth suggested it was a very relevant approach to develop a program which works with the change in light intensity. We could have used another device which could detect the changing light intensity in the atmosphere and change the range accordingly but this approach would have required further research into the PICAXE programming software. We could have also made the motors even slower as the speed of the car was not specified giving the LDRs sufficient time to react and turn accordingly.

This was a very practical and challenging project which required good knowledge of the PICAXE programming language and it was to me a learning process on the whole as at the start we learned to use case statements and why that program wouldn’t work practically even though in theory we thought we were almost done with the programming bit.

Although I still require a lot of practice on the understanding of the programming language I did get some really valuable experience in understanding the logic behind the written program.

I also learned a lot of things about the design process and how a lot of things that had to be taken into account which we left for the end, such as the weight of the batteries which kept moving and unbalancing the whole buggy causing it to turn in different directions. The skid at the front also proved to be a bad idea as expected while it was being designed. The LDRs which were at the bottom needed to be fixed at certain positions and we used a piece of cardboard which also kept moving when the buggy moved this was also a major design flaw.