I started work on the timing coding. Unfortunately, at this point it's behaving a little erratically. I hooked my oscilloscope up and wasn't able to get any clear reading. So, I decided to try the receiver in the car itself and charged up the batteries overnight. This morning, I connected everything and when I tried to operate it, I had no response. I did notice the car twitched if I shut off the transmitter, so I was pretty sure it wasn't broken. After pulling out the manual, I went through the settings and found it was in QPCM (Quick Pulse Code Modulation) mode rather than PPM (Pulse Position Modulation) mode. After changing it, the receiver responded just fine. I hooked up my oscilloscope to the receiver after plugging it back into my circuit to visually see the waveform and I had been expecting it to be high at idle and going low for a period of time. However it was the opposite, so I'll need to adjust the code to my new findings.

Additionally, I noticed that one of the struts on my car had snapped in half. I was able to carefully drill a hole lengthwise through the plstic on both pieces and fashion a pin out of a large paperclip that held the piece together. I added some JB Weld onto it and am just waiting for a few days for it to dry completely before putting it back together.

[img mmc_card.jpg||left]I made a diagram of all the pieces that will be going into the first build of the robot. I will need to make 2 or 3 circuit boards with 1-2 of them most likely being single-sided and the 3rd being double-sided. It will have a USB extension coming out of the arduino with a jack on the bottom of the car that will be protected by the battery covering so that I can update the arduino without disassembling the car. I will also be putting in a socket for an MMC card for future use, however I'm undecided about the MMC card being part of the PIC board or it being a separate board at this point. I will also have a board that will fit on top of the arduino and provide connectors to other the boards as well as places to plug in sensors. There will undoubtedly be some changes to the design as I learn more, but the design is definitely coming along nicely at this point.