After talking to Vyas, we’re gonna just use a webcam for now. That simplifies my job so I turned my attention this week back to working on the physical prototype.

I got the elevator working! It’s a little jittery, but I haven’t figured out if it is because of the stepper motor, or lag to facial detection, or a combination of the two. The goal for this week is to get that smooth and get the angle for top and bottom. Bottom should always be zero because that is where it initializes to, but the top seems a little tricky because something is going on where the motor doesn’t always move the same amount for one step. It might be the voltage because right now I’m using 7V when optimal for the motor is 12V.

Another issue I spent a bit of time on this week is with the servos. The motorkit library does not have the code for the servos included, only for dc motors and stepper motors. I took a look at the code and I’m pretty sure I can easily add in the part for the servos, especially because adafruit already has a servokit library, so I’ll just have to combine the two.

Also worked with Eddy on testing the threading for each component and he went over his code, so that we all know where to add our parts into the main code part. Right now, he’s having the computer vision module separated from the motor control, but I don’t understand why that can’t just be together. I think it would be a little faster because there would be less overhead. It’s not an issue now, just something to think about in the future.

In summary, goals for this week are to (1) smoother motor movement, (2) include motor stopping when hitting a limit (top/bottom of the elevator), (3) get base constructed, and (4) add servos to the library.