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Programming Behavior Testing

After the electrical engineer was done designing the interface board and microcontroller the electronic control systems were tested by replacing the solenoid valves with four LEDs. After the polarity of the LEDs was determined they were connected to the wires coming from relay switches on the interface board; two of the coin cell batteries were used to provide appropriate power supply of 6V. The program running on the microcontroller was then replaced with a modified version that used wait periods of five seconds rather than an hour. The microcontroller was then allowed to run several cycles to confirm that it behaved as expected by cycling valves 1 and 2 open and closed several times before opening valve 3. After the normal operation cycle had been confirmed the solar panel, which had been placed inside the housing and covered until this point, was exposed to direct sunlight. After the microcontroller finished cycling valves 1 and 2 it sent signals to open valves 3 and 4 in sequence, confirming that the resurfacing section of the code was working properly.