(We worked together on most things this week so all of the following was done together with the other two team-mates.)
Tasks Accomplished:
We accomplished a lot of hardware iterations and fabrication this week. Software also made decent progress in being able to handle a 4 mic setup with a clear path forwards for a list of software fixes necessary to improve the precision and such. Since there is strong similarity between the prototype in-use and the final wearable, we are confident that the final integration will not require too much difficulty.
Potential Risks:
We are now getting really down to the wire on time. The biggest risk is that at this stage, any bugs will likely have to be software fixes/workarounds due to the hardware turnaround time (and also the unfortunate closure of the makerspace due to COVID cases). There is also not much time for another iteration round so the integration results early this week will be very crucial.
This week we were able to get 4 mics to work with the board, and are now able to start implementing the 4 mic localization algorithms. We also did some optimization on sampling speed (for the mics) and communication speed (for OLEDs via I2c)
We ran into many issues in our past week, using up a decent amount of our built in slack time. The biggest risk for the coming week is not being able to get our hardware ironed out. We would like to freeze our hardware and finalize it by thanksgiving, so if we are not able to get a second prototype out, it will slow this progress.
This week I will be finishing up the next iteration of the CAD designs and fabricating them early in the week, likely Tuesday. I will also further look into the OLED driver to decrease latency further, and also start work on integrating the battery.
This week I will be updating the CAD designs and sending them off for fabrication again. Once new parts come in, I will have to do further soldering and wiring to hook up the microphones. I will also start work on the battery module.
This week I will be sending off the CAD design for fabrication since many changes were made last week in the design. I will also be working on the display driver and connecting the Mic array to the MCU.
This week we were able to start tinkering around with the parts and setting up the groundwork for future tasks. Most notably, we set up our development toolchain (IDE, debug tools etc), soldered up pins to our boards for development, created a base firmware for our project (with peripherals correctly enabled, syscalls handled, basic NVIC interrupts handled) and ultimately was able to flash a working blinky program to our board. Along with this, we also connected up the mic to the board through the DFSDM.
As we get closer to our interim presentation with our MVP, we are also running a bit tighter on time. The biggest risk for the upcoming week is not being able to get the microphone system set up and a basic data pipeline working, as this will greatly delay our algorithmic development. Another risk comes from the hardware side of things: we are planning on fabricating (i.e. 3D printing) a prototype wearable assembly, however 3D printing is finnicky and prone to possible errors and delays.
As anticipated last week, my time this week was tight due to midterms and other class commitments. However, I was able to successfully do the MCU bootstrapping and toolchain setup. This week I will be sending off the CAD design for fabrication, but more importantly I will be wiring everything up in order for the others to develop. We are currently working with 2 microphones and I hope to have all 4 microphones wired up this week. I will also start work on the display side of things after the wiring setup is complete.
