[Team]

A little bit behind schedule this week as our design isn’t 100% finalized, but we’ll be working hard to catch up over the next week. Spent the front half of the week prepping our design review presentation. Ended up with botched slides due to some miscommunication, but it worked out fairly well in the end. We’ll be sure to amp up the detail for our design specs and metrics in our design doc (due tomorrow!), which has taken up most of the back half of the week. We also spent time testing the capacitive sensors so we can come to a conclusion on our sensor choices. I think as a team we’ve mitigated most of the risks to our success, but we mainly just need to nail down any pending decisions so we can make more progress.

[Sensors]

Did some more ultrasonic sensor testing to gauge efficacy. I think a slightly higher grade COTS sensor will solve our problem if we go this route. The capacitive sensor is exciting in-lab, but we have yet to test it physically in Hunt. Also fleshed out schematics for both designs: (1) ceiling-mounted IR + ultrasonic bundle and (2) ceiling-mounted IR + desk-mounted capacitive. Wiring will be far simpler with an entirely ceiling mounted system but proximity sensing will be far more accurate with the tabletop capacitive solution. Gotta make a decision soon!

Round 3 of sensor testing should end within 7 days, and we should be moving toward circuitry, mount designs, and efficiency/mapping algorithms from there.

[UI]

Started taking the storyboard and wireframe design of the app to an actual working prototype. I’ve refamiliarized myself with React and Javascript (our frontend) and have learned the basics of Firebase (our backend). Again, React Native was a design decision aimed at platform inclusivity, so I want to make sure I make the right choices for libraries I incorporate into our framework. Trying to keep my focus on functionality over design first. I built a live skeleton with our stack, and I did a ton of research on early design choices to help optimize the user experience. Building this right the first time with well-defined components will make feature additions and changes non-destructive and aneurysm-free.

Deliverables for next week:

• Design document
• Order and test final round of sensors
• Final sensor system schematic
• Draft of sensor bundle casing (3D printed casing)
• Functional full stack app mockup