Month: October 2019

Jason Huang

Accomplishments:

• Obtained facial data via online (http://www.face-rec.org/databases/)
• Successfully implemented basic 2D facial recognition (no depth yet), based on dlib
• Wrote additional code to store registered users in a directory, and have the user’s face be compared with all the registered faces with the tested face

Upcoming Work

I will continue testing my new code with random facial data from online as well before the camera arrives. I hope that by the next few weeks, the code will also be able to detect 3D, so that someone can’t unlock a door by holding a picture of a face. This is to ensure that the actual human is in front of the camera to unlock the door.

Schedule

Made substantial progress this week, with the help of some online libraries and more free time. I am almost back on track, and hope to include depth in consideration of our facial recognition algorithm after our depth camera arrives.

 

Joe Zhao

This week I was able to talk to Professor Kelly, and work out the correct type of wire to use. Litz Wire would have too high of an impedance, so the best type of wire to use would be one with a higher gauge. We will compensate for the skin effect by reducing the frequency that we will be oscillating the coil at. The magnet, along with some other components for the front have been ordered, so I am now waiting for those. In the mean time, I helped Emily debug some issue with the bluetooth circuit, as she was also doing a lot with figuring out the camera issues.

For next week, I hope to have the parts so at least the coil will be completed, and I can make sure that it is able to handle the correct oscillation frequency and amperage. Then, I will also construct the class D switching circuit, and test that before adding it with the coil. Two coils will be made so I can measure the output resistance. I am slightly behind due to the coil wire problem, but I am looking to catch up this next week.

Emily Wong

This week we finally got our original camera (Intel SR305), and I can pick it up on Monday, so I’m excited to get some real camera data. The circuit is basically all set up, so next week will consist of getting the camera to interface with the RPi, which has already been flashed with Linux from last week, and figuring out how to make sure that none of the picture data gets lost in transit to the processing part. This week in particular was a bit slow because a lot of the groundwork for the front and back were already built, so it was just a bit of tweaking and making sure the correct data was being sent around when in different states of the control flow. I also spent a good amount of time designing an outer enclosure for both the back and the front. Haven’t had time to print anything out yet, but I will be consulting some mechE friends to see if my design makes sense before doing anything concrete. Joe and I also spec’ed out some motors and a door, so hopefully we can turn a deadbolt in the upcoming weeks!

 

Team

Things seem to be looking up, since we finally got our camera issues sorted out (hopefully once and for all!). Next week will consist mainly of Emily and Jason working together to merge code so picture data flows well between the two systems that were built so far. Since in-class demos are coming up, we can hopefully have at least the facial recognition working with the front/back circuits.

Jason Huang

Accomplishments:

• Obtained facial data via online (http://www.face-rec.org/databases/)
• Continued implementing Similarity Matching Schema, based on paper An Introduction to Biometric Recognition by Anil K. Jain, Arun Ross
• Started integrating facial data with my existing code

Upcoming Work

I want to continue playing around with the facial data that I’ve found online since we’re having more camera issues. Since most of our components have arrived, we can now progress forward at a quicker rate than before.

Schedule

This week also proved to be a busy week, with a few essays and a presentation due next week, but I was able to make a little more progress. With a second three-day weekend coming up, I hope to write more code to fine-tune my existing codebase.

 

Emily

This week was quite a busy one with midterms and papers, so I made a bit less progress than I had hoped. At the end of last week, we finally got what we thought were all the components we needed to finally interface with the depth camera that we have (Intel SR300), but yet another setback has occurred! Even though the Intel website said that the cable for USB communications was a USB 3.0 to Micro B, that was wrong! Instead it uses a special I-PEX to USB 3.0 connector that is REALLY hard to find online, so this poses quite a big problem… I’ve emailed our TA about our problem, so hopefully we can figure it out next week 🙁 In other progress, there has been more progress on the circuitry for communications between the front and the back. Button presses send the correct data/state to the other microcontroller, and the LED’s flash correctly! I’ve also made some very crude designs on how I want the outer enclosure to look. Preliminary talks with my other team members have ruled that we probably want to use some type of acrylic as material. We’ve also decided that we are probably going to laser cut it, I’m going to be taking the 1-unit mini to get certified to use the laser cutters in the TechSpark space 🙂

In terms of timeline, I’m S U P E R behind on getting camera data to Jason because the camera we have/Intel makes me 🙁 Other parts of the project are going smoothly, so while I’m making progress on the other parts that are in the future timeline, I’m really behind on that one part.

 

Joe

This week, I put in the order for the circuit parts I’ll need for the back part of the circuits, as well as starting to look into different batteries I’ll need to actually achieve the amount of power for 24 hours. On the actual construction of the inductors,  I ran into an issue that required more research. One was the ampacity of wires, the effective frequency that the wires can support, and the resistance of the wire. Since we were originally going to drive the inductor at 1mhz, we needed wire that can support that frequency, due to the skin effect. However, the gauge and strand count of Litz Wire to support that frequency is stated to be around 7.8k ohms/meter. On the other hand, using solid wire would require a much larger gauge, and also may be incompatible with higher frequency. I need to do more research on how the high resistance may impact the circuit, or reduce the clock speed.

My goal for next week is to get the magnet wire ordered, construct the rest of the circuit and see if I’m getting the proper output at the ends where the inductor will be attached.

 

Whole Team:

This week several of us were busy and we also found a couple of unexpected issues. This puts a bit behind, but we had some slack left in our Gannt chart to account for this. After clearing out the issues with Intel weirdness and inductor wire choice, we should be able to continue as planned.

Jason Huang

Accomplishments:

• Camera arrived, can start gathering facial data from it now
• Continued implementing Similarity Matching Schema, based on paper An Introduction to Biometric Recognition by Anil K. Jain, Arun Ross

Upcoming Work

Next week, I would like to finish implementing the similarity matching schema based on the algorithm provided by the paper. Since our camera has now arrived, I’m able to more easily test the existing code I have.

Schedule

I had a midterm this week, and was generally busier than the previous weeks, so I fell behind a little bit. I did not get as much work done as I wanted to, so hopefully next week I can shift my focus on 18-500 and catch up again.

Emily

This week I created the preliminary circuit to do Bluetooth transmission between the back and front including button input to start the recognition/registering processes. The cable for the camera came in on Friday, but I was gone for the weekend, so on Monday we should be able to get some real camera data! Things are on schedule, and I’m excited to try sending data to the pi for some processing next week 🙂

Joe

This week I worked on determining the values for the capacitors that would be necessary to provide sufficient peak power, and recharge in time for repeated use. From there, I also took a look at the appropriate voltage regulation and voltage to operate the coil at to maximize power utilization. This is a little behind schedule because of an onsite and midterm prep this week, but I hope to gain back ground next week. I want to get parts ordered this next week.

Whole Team

We are working to finish the design review paper and we are (mostly) on track. After doing the design review, we actually have a much better idea of what we want to accomplish and how to implement the rest. We will meet with the tech spark consultant tomorrow to see if we can leverage the tools there to help our progress.

Jason Huang

Accomplishments:

• Found additional sources for creating Face Curvature Maps and implementing Similarity Matching Schema
• Completed implementation of evaluating facial curvature maps
• Started on implementing Similarity Matching Schema, based on paper An Introduction to Biometric Recognition by Anil K. Jain, Arun Ross
• Created slides for Design Review presentation

Upcoming Work

Next week, I would like to finish implementing the similarity matching schema based on the algorithm provided by the paper. With our cameras arriving soon, I would also like to get started working on 3D facial pre-processing, so I can use the data points to create a facial curvature map and test different functions that I have written so far.

Schedule

I am currently on schedule. As stated from last week, there are four parts to the algorithm and I plan on tackling each section on a weekly basis. Instead of implementing Viola-Jones, I plan on using 3D data from the RGB camera instead, which eases the workload a bit.

 

Joe Zhao

This week I talked to Professor Kelly about the preliminary inductive power circuit. He advised to tune the circuit in series instead of parallel, in order to deliver greater current through the inductor. I spent the next few days tuning that circuit, but then we decided to move the raspberry pi to the front, increasing the amount of power needed. During the period where we were debating this issue, I designed the front power circuitry, as well as the backup battery circuit for the back. Parts will need to be spec’d again.

Last week my hope was to begin implementing the power system with parts ordered, but since there was a change in the location of our primary computation, I will need to redo the math in order to get the proper power delivery. In lieu of this, I decided to design the front power system, thereby still completing a weeks worth of work, just moving things around as we came to a decision. Now that we have decided on the location of the RPI, I hope to deliver a working power delivery system that can send 4W. This will be sufficient to power the rpi during idle and the camera. Then, during active power consumption, capacitors in parallel will be able to supply peak power during the 5secs of computation.

 

Emily Wong

This week I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out how to get our depth camera to talk with our microcontrollers so that we would be able to use Intel’s SDK to get RGB and depth pictures. There was a lot of conflicting information on whether the camera’s USB 3.0 was backwards compatible with USB 2.0, but I wasn’t able to test since the cable didn’t come with the camera.. 🙁 Other than that, I’ve started wiring things together (LED’s and buttons to microcontroller) to get the base of the front started.

Next week will be primarily spent on getting camera data so that Jason can finally base his algorithm on concrete data (which is what this week was for but there were a lot of problems [see above]). Once I get the cable, I’ll be able to test out getting data from the camera through the microcontroller, and since I’ve already been working on the base for the front, it shouldn’t be that bad to get back on track, since according to schedule I should be working on having the bluetooth modules send data (permit/deny) back and forth. 

 

Team

We worked on the design review slides this week, and had some discussions mostly based around the camera problems we were having. We found that the Raspberry Pi 4 has USB 3.0 ports, so we changed our design so that our computation for facial recognition was in the front rather than the back, meaning that the bluetooth should only be used for sending state/decisions for locking/unlocking. Other than that, everything seems to be mostly on track, and everyone has a good understanding of what everyone else is doing, so help is abundant 🙂