First Subgroup meet (9/2/2015)

Our first subgroup meeting for the 1/12 scale model on the Spartan Superway Project consisted of a lot of organizing. Not everyone knew what they wanted to work on specifically. So, we made a list of projects that needed to be done and had people sign up for tasks that they would be interested in. This list included the wayside rail (gives power to the cars), the track rebuild (smooths out and increases the size of the track that the cars will be riding along), new cars and proximity sensors (adds more cars and gives them sensors so they do not run into one another), raw programing team (a lot of programming will be needed for multiple projects), solar (one of the main objectives of the Spartan Superway is to be self sustaining), and a birds eye view camera (this camera will watch the cars and track them from a birds eye view). This list is subject to change, we may add new projects along the way. I would have liked to work on everything because it all sounds very interesting, but I wrote myself down for the wayside rail and the the solar projects. Once we had made groups the session was over so that was all we did when we were in the Spartan Superway Workshop. At home I started looking up ways that we could implement the wayside rail. There are are many different ways to set up a wayside rail. The third rail system uses the support track as ground and has a third rail that the car would slide along with a collector shoe. This shoe collects current as it slides along the third rail. The only problem I can think of with this design is when we implement this on the 1/12 scale model it maybe a hazard to touch. This can be fixed though by insulating the outside of it to reduce the risk of shock.