Spent the week getting familiar with Raspberry Pi, testing sensors, getting power estimates, and preparing for our design review presentation. The capacitive proximity sensors just arrived, so we’ll be jumping into that early next week. Progress was a little slow for me this week with other commitments, but I’m still on schedule and getting closer to finalizing an overall design.

[Sensors]

Had some trouble getting set up with RPi for the first time, so a lot of time was sucked into debugging what was wrong with our setup. We got our RPi up and running, but I did end up testing the functionality of the ultrasonic sensors with my Arduino UNO instead. The online tutorials were all Arduino-based and it ended up being a simpler task. After all that effort, it turns out the HC-SR04 sensors may not be effective enough for our use case, and we’re ordering new sensors to test next week. Once our mock carrel is set up, I’ll be able to better run ceiling-to-table tests as well.

[UI]

Took a break from sensors to start storyboarding our app UI. I’ve been brushing up on React and Javascript to begin designing the app. I’ve worked with Swift to build an iPhone app in the past, but I’m planning to transition my React web dev skills into this app. Given our timeline, using the React Native framework app is far more feasible, with the added benefit of being cross-platform compatible –– we could have an iOS/Android app with the same effort. Inclusivity is always a plus!

[User Study]

Considering our latency + response time analysis from last week, I sent out a more formalized survey to gauge the user experience with app delays and the usefulness of some specific features.

Deliverables for next week:

• Andrew ID auth solution (this is delayed as I didn’t have a chance to follow up this week)
• Conclusive testing on capacitive paint proximity sensors (this will define our final design)
• Moooore sensor testing! – looking at new ultrasonic and photoelectric sensors
• Build/tape mock carrel in the D-level cubicles
• Design document