Vehicle Position Sensing Team Week 9/14/2016 – 9/21/2016

The week, the team was focus on testing the Hall Effect sensor, the test was done on Arduino base test environment. The circuit was constructed as shown: 

The Arduino was programmed using the following simple code:

#define hall 0

void setup() {

  pinMode(hall,INPUT);

  Serial.begin(9600);

}

void loop() {

  sensorValue = analogRead(analogInPin);

  Serial.print(sensorValue);

  delay(2);

}

Conclusion for Testing:

• The Sensor only can only detect ferrous object inside a 3mm range.
• The sensor we used for testing only outputs digital signal, which means its reading might not be effected by the magnets on the track.
•  The team tested the sensor with a magnets, the result confirmed that the sensor is not affected by magnets.

Recent plans

• The team need to find new corrugated ferrous strips with much narrower spacing between peaks.
• The team is looking for a new type of Hall Effect sensor which is able to provide analog output.