This week, I spent the first couple of days focusing on the Ethics assignment, in preparation for Wednesday’s guest lecture, which was enlightening and provided me with some valuable insights about our project’s ethics.
After the Ethics assignment, I started drafting up the Python code that would run on the Raspberry Pi. Specifically, I set up the team’s github repository, as well as the project structure. Then, I used jsonschema (a standard for defining json data models) to flush out the exact data structures being transmitted to and from each of our project components. Each component should use these schemas to validate all data sent and received, as the jsonschema standard has implementations in many languages. I then wrote my own validators for the schemas in Python, and tested them with my own PyTest tests, marking the beginning of the Raspberry Pi test suite.
After this, I begun writing the main script that will operate on the Raspberry Pi. The main logic involves reading the GPIO pin data for XBee-received information, processing that data into JSON, validating it, and modifying internal program state to reflect the received updates. In addition, I’m using the Python Time library to embed a countdown timer to program the 15-second timed backend API updates.
Next week, I hope to finish this program, test it on my local machine, and then load it onto an actual RPi, and see how it performs on the target machine.