Design Issues:

The following is the list of items that we need to study further in our design: 

1. Studying the architecture/interface of the remote control unit of the tank:
   The remote control unit has two mechanical levers to control each wheel. However, we need to change the mechanical interface into an electrical interface, which we can control through the XSV-300 board. Since we do not have any specifications for the remote control unit’s circuitry, we need to first obtain the remote control unit and determine how it works.
   
   
2. Understanding the Radio Frequency (RF) interface:
   We need to know how the protocol and the data format for sending and receiving works. Knowing that will allow us to pack and unpack messages to be sent over RF correctly.
   
   
3. Understanding the compass interface and its capabilities:
   We need to know the theory behind the operation of the compass and its capabilities. We also need to know its protocol and data format produced off its pins.
   
   
4. Determining the control unit that should be mounted on the tank:
   We need to decide what kind of micro-controller we will use and how much storage we need to store the logic to communicate between the RF, compass, and XSV-300.
   
5. Understanding the protocol for interfacing between the PC and XSV-300:
   We need to know how to write code to communicate between the PC and XSV-300 using a RS232 serial port. We need to choose a programming language and a complementing communication package to communicate the PC with the XSV-300 board.