Jonathan Cheng’s Status Report for Oct 16 2021

This week was focused entirely on completing the design review, which was a challenge because of midterm exams and projects all due at the same time. However, our group did manage to get the Design Review Report done by the end of the week. After completing my part of the report earlier on in the week, I focused on submitting purchase and borrow requests to the ECE department, and also researched on which models of the hardware components would suit our use case the best. The conclusions I made are reflected in the bill of materials, as well as the research results of my teammates.

For the Design Review Report, I was originally tasked with the Design Requirements and Architecture Overview sections, but also contributed to the System Design and Testing sections of the report, due to a time crunch we were facing.

This weekend I hope to finish the Ethics assignment early. Then, I plan to pick up the borrowed raspberry pi’s from the ECE inventory desk, and start implementation of the central data hubs.

Jonathan Cheng’s Status Report for Oct 9 2021

This week I spent the beginning part focused on my peers Design Review presentations, the last of which ended on Wednesday. After that, I looked mainly at the order list for my project component, the raspberry pi Data Hubs. Since the r-pi is the main course of the project component, there isn’t much to order on that front, as I can borrow r-pi’s from the ECE department. However, XBee modules do need to be ordered, and those are going on the list. In addition, I conducted more independent research on how I am going to write the embedded code for the r-pi, smoothing out some questions I had internally about the process.

I also took charge of writing this week’s team status report; the team has decided to go with a round robin approach for completing that weekly report. Early next week I plan to help write the Design Review writeup and get that submitted early. Then, I’m going to draft up some of the r-pi python code, and see if I can’t get my hands on a r-pi to test it on.

In terms of schedule, we’re right on track. It is currently the beginning of October and we are finishing up final designs and starting implementation.

Nathan Ang’s Status Report for Oct 9 2021

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

This week, I worked on bootstrapping the cloud storage (MongoDB) and setting up the skeleton framework of the software stack. It is still a work in progress.

I also helped edit the slides for the our Design Review Presentation, which was a big focus for our group in the beginning of the week.

Is your progress on schedule or behind?

I am on schedule with my parts and feel confident moving forward. I expect the implementation part to have a lot more roadblocks, so I will be working hard in the weeks to come. I also expect shipping of necessary to take a while, so we will order parts soon (by Monday)

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This week, my task it to continue working on the cloud storage and setting up the skeleton framework of the software stack. I will also help the team order necessary components!

Jonathan Cheng’s Status Report for Oct 2 2021

This week was focused on research and implementation design for our Design Review coming up. Since Nathan and I switched focuses, I have been working on flushing out details regarding the Data Hub. Some topics that posed difficult design decisions were the communication protocol to use, the software to interact with the backend, timing requirements, etc.

In preparation for the design review next week, which I will be presenting, I was in charge of setting up the slide deck and assigned slides to each person. I also made 4 of the 12 slides, as well as creating the new block diagram for our detailed implementation approach.

Next week, after presenting the Design Review, I will be transitioning into working with Will Foy on exactly how to interface the XBee modules together, optimizing for power efficiency while maintaining data accuracy.

Nathan Ang’s Status Report for Oct 2 2021

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

This week, I completed research on a good software stack for our use case. I researched different types of popular web software stacks, but ultimately chose MERN due to its smooth learning curve and reported focus on efficiently creating an MVP, which is exactly what we need.

I also completed my slides for the upcoming Design Review Presentation, which was a big focus for our group this week.

Is your progress on schedule or behind?

I am on schedule with my parts and feel confident moving forward. I expect the implementation part to have a lot more roadblocks, so I will be working hard in the weeks to come.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This week, my task is to bootstrap the cloud storage (MongoDB) to be used. If done correctly, I can have an endpoint that the data hub can communicate to our cloud database via.

Nathan Ang’s Status Report for Sep 25 2021

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

This week I focused on the project proposal presentation. I refined the slides and put in time and effort in preparation. The presentation went well, and the rest of class time was devoting to listening to other teams’ presentations.

I also switched responsibilities to the software stack. I researched the pro’s and cons to different software stacks such as MERN  and MEAN, as well as various hosting services.

Is your progress on schedule or behind?

I am on schedule with the research and feel confident moving forward. Research will be wrapped up soon and I will start implementation soon!

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

I hope to wrap up the research with plenty of reasoning, and sync up with the rest of the team if they need any assistance.

Jonathan Cheng’s Status Report for Sep 25 2021

This week we had our class-wide proposal presentations, so all of our in-class time was used on listening to the other projects our peers are taking on. As such, I did not make much in-class progress this week regarding my research.However, we did have some meaningful discussions in preparation for our proposal presentation regarding division of labor.

In short, I am now switching over to researching the Data Hub portion (using Raspberry Pi) of the project. On that front, I have committed several hours of my time to reading through online materials regarding Raspberry Pi, the XBee Module, and the Zigbee Protocol. I have found multiple articles and walkthroughs that use similar tech stacks to what we initially planned, so these will be valuable when I implement the data hubs. After reading through these articles, I have narrowed down what materials we need for this portion of the project, as well as identified some challenges that we may face. For more information on the Data Hub research, please refer to our Design Notes document in the shared google drive folder.

Nathan Ang’s Status Report for Sep 18 2021

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

This week I focused on researching of potential technologies for our project. Specifically, I looked into sensors to detect occupancy. I took a look into varying sensors (IR, Computer Vision, Pressure), and I started looked online for purchase options.

Also, I took up the task of dividing up work for the Project Proposal presentation and helped hash out a coherent schedule for the project. What stood out to me was how little time we had to realistically produce an amazing project, so I am now in grind mode.

Is your progress on schedule or behind?

It is very early in the project and we just made the schedule, but we seem to currently be on schedule.  I have no doubts that conflicts will arise as we work on the project, but I looking forward to solving issues in our project together!

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This coming week, my task is to research the occupancy sensor side of the project. I will finalize a purchase on parts needed on this hardware side with plenty of reasoning. I can’t wait for the weeks to come!

Jonathan Cheng’s Status Report for Sep 18 2021

This week I focused on coordinated research of potential technologies for our project. I was personally looking into software technologies for our web-app, as well as different types of sensors. During our mandatory lab meetings, we collaboratively conducted research for our project design and formed presentation slides.

In addition, I took the task of setting up our team website and writing our team introduction and project overview. This weekend we, as a team, will be preparing 12 slides (of which I created 3) for our Proposal Presentation. Research, design, and rehearsal will all be part of this week’s weekend meetings.

We seem to be on schedule, perhaps slightly behind on the research side. Since our product has multiple components that are relatively unexplored by the team, we have to make sure that we consider many viable options.

This coming week I plan to present our most promising software technologies to the rest of the team and finalize our tech stack for the web-app, and even start implementation of preliminary software components.