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Team Status Report: 10/9

This week, MeeDm presented our design review presentation. Way to go MeeDm!

The team spent most of the week working on the design report while each member also made progress in their own area. Lucas developed the schematics for the prototypical bluetooth tags, Tarush finalized the development stack for the web app and got the RPI 4 hub set up with Django, and MeeDm conducted further research on what constitutes irregular cat eating habits – to that end, she reached out to her vet but has not yet heard back.

With the demo tag hardware built, MeeDm and Tarush will begin working on integrating the full tag-to-hub pipeline, while Lucas will primarily work on getting the tag pcb layouts finished and ordered. We have also finally received our shipment of BLE module development boards, so Lucas will be able to start tag firmware development in earnest.

The primary, current project risks still mainly have to do with hardware development timing as well as parts availability and logistics. Another risk involves spending too much time on course logistics and material such as the very pressing design report rather than actual development.

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Tarush’s Status Report for 10/09/2021

This week a lot of my work was spent on logistical issues, primarily conducting trade studies for finalizing the tech stack we wanted to use for our web application as well as working on the design presentation and helping MeeDm prepare for her presentation.

I also had to redo the Django and apache web server setup, since before we were using the raspberry pi 3 and now switched to raspberry pi 4. Surprisingly, the process was quite a bit more involved and I ran into a bunch of troubleshooting difficulties in getting them up and running.

We had sent out an email to MeeDm’s vet last week regarding, but unfortunately have still not received a response regarding the cat’s eating habits and indication that something may be wrong, hence delaying my finalization of the UI for the app. If we still do not receive a response by Monday, I will be proceeding with the original design I had in mind which I tested with other people who own cats on what they would want the app to look like.

This week, the first half will primarily be spent on writing up the design report due on Wednesday, after which I will be working on creating the UI for the app.

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Lucas’s Status Report: 10/2

This week mostly had me tied up by a pretty tight crunch at work, but I still got through most of the goals set out for this week. These were mainly to get the demo hardware working as well as finalizing the BLE module trade study and selection. I also worked with MeeDm and Tarush on the Design Proposal presentation.

One of the most unexpected hurdles in choosing the BLE module ended up being totally unrelated to technical trade-offs: logistics. As it turns out, the world is experiencing a really bad semiconductor shortage, and the supply chain for ic’s and mcu’s has been left in a rough state as a result. Almost all the options I considered ended up having to be scrapped due to either a development board or module not being available – in some case’s the ic itself was out of stock with lead times ranging from 18-52 weeks!

In the end I settled on the DA14531 BLE module. The primary points I considered were power consumption, ease of development/implementation, and supply chain; the DA14531 knocked each category out of the park. This IC features an ARM Cortex-M0+ processor and achieves absolutely top-of-the-line power consumption specs of under 22µA/MHz clock rate and 240nA hibernation mode. Dialog Semiconductor provides ample documentation and has an active forum – critical to ease of development. Finally, the IC and its accompanying evaluation boards are in stock and readily available from a number of distributors, including DigiKey. With the order placed, my focus will now shift towards getting the prototypical schematic and layout finished for the BLE tags.

Speaking of tags, I also worked on the Arduino-based demo hardware and completed assembly of the RFID bluetooth tag:

The tag features a coin cell holder, headers for an HC-05 Bluetooth module and RC-522 RFID reader, and power switch. It’s quick, it’s dirty, and it works. Along with the load cell based weight sensing tag, this RFID tag will allow the team to develop and test the full project pipeline on real hardware without waiting for the actual BLE tag pcb’s to be spun up. Next week I’ll wrap up the demo hardware by putting it in a nice, custom-made enclosure. I’ll work with MeeDm to get it connected to the RPI and I’ll work with Tarush to have the web-app display communications between the demo hardware and the RPI hub.

As I learned the hard way this week, a new risk to consider is time commitment at my job. Going forward I’ll have to actively temper my responsibilities there with my work here.

 

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MeeDm’s Status Report for 10/2/2021

This week we have been prepping for our design presentation. I went through the slides and outlined all of them in the beginning and then also finalized slides for communication between the hub and the devices as well as the hub and the web app. Additionally I did the diagrams for the web app.

In terms of work on the project, I did research, set up the raspberry pi 3, ordered things that we need, and started writing my code to connect to peripheral devices and connect to them. In terms of research I found some links where others have done similar things using a packet called bluepy, which is a python library that allows you find and connect to devices, then read in packets. It uses bluez, a bluetooth stack that raspberry pi 3’s use. After setting up the raspberry pi, I’ve started a python script to start scanning and connecting to devices. Additionally I’ve ordered some cat bowls, microhdmi to hdmi cables, and a usbc cable to start hooking up our raspberry pi 4.

My goal for next week is to start the multithreading portion of the python script and present for the team.

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Team Status Report for 10/02/2021

A lot of the team’s time this week was spent setting up our environment to get ready for development. We ran into a number of road blocks getting our raspberry pi setup in lab but were able to figure it out! We also realized we needed to immediately start placing orders for the things we needed to buy and hence we bought cat bowls, microhdmi to hdmi cables, a usbc cable, and our bluetooth low energy module.

We also received feedback during our meeting with Professor Mukherjee and Edward on what all they expect to see in our design presentation, so we worked on incorporating that in our slides as well.

We are extremely excited for the excellent presentation our fellow teammate MeeDm is about to deliver this week! With our development environment now mostly set up, we’ll begin properly developing the project and working on the design report next.

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Tarush’s Status Report for 10/02/2021

This week a lot of my time was spent doing research on finalizing the tech stack I want to be using for my web application. We will be proceeding with using Django as our web framework, python for the backend, and a combination of vanilla javascript, html, and css for the frontend. I am also pretty confident of moving forward with SQLite for our database management, but will still confirm that it covers all our requirements as opposed to having to rely on MySQL potentially. More information on the trade studies I conducted will be added to our design review report due next week.

I also spent time helping in creating our design presentation slides. We received really useful feedback from the professors and Edward on what all to make sure we talk about and include in the design presentation. One of the things we realized we could have done a better job of explaining was what the web application would potentially look like, so we included a diagram as well as as detailed information on the functionality of the web app.

A lot of time was also spent in getting set up for development. I spent time assisting MeeDm in setting up our raspberry pi in lab as well as getting our apache server and django framework running on the pi. I am now able to connect to the raspberry pi remotely and can start development immediately. I added two pictures below, one of the Django framework being setup successfully as well as the web app being deployed on port 8000 locally. 

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MeeDm’s Status Report for 9/25/2021

This Sunday, we did some prep work for the presentation that was on Monday. We finished up deciding on all of our requirements, by thinking about being a cat owner and what they would need. We also polished up the slides, which Lucas presented on Monday. I helped out a with designing the slides as well as input as a cat owner and re-doing the hand-drawn diagrams and was responsible for testing & verification slides, gantt chart, and the division of tasks/labor slides.

We also met up after class to start setting up the raspberry pi and also Lucas and  I started taking a look at the robocat one more time. Because the pieces were messed up, we decided to reprint those pieces.

Lastly, I’ve been doing lots of research this week on how to use the bluetooth on the raspberry pi, and looked at ble5, and how to setup the rasbpi the way I want to. Tarush and I will be finishing up setting up the pi in the lab tomorrow and I will be initializing setup for the bluetooth module as well. I’ve also thought through some hardware diagrams in order to receive interrupts or poll for inputs from the ble device (tags) and make threads to run each of these at once.

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Tarush’s Status Report for 09/25/2021

I spent most of Sunday wrapping up our presentation slides and in the evening helped Lucas with his presentation speech and offered some pointers to include.  Along with that, I also started doing some research on what all technologies I plan on using for the web app. I also conducted some trade studies which I will be adding to our design report to assist me in finalizing that. Along with that, I spent some time brainstorming how I want the web app to eventually look like and added some pictures below.

My progress is a bit behind schedule (not enough to cause any delay) as I still need to finalize what database tech I plan on using. More research will be done on that tonight and will be finalized by tomorrow.

The next deliverable would be setting up a basic apache web server on the raspberry pi and setting up the django web app framework. Unlike my other team members, I’ve never worked with raspberry pi so I need to spend time familiarizing myself with how it works and hopefully setting up our “Hello World” demo should give me enough of a grasp on it.

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Lucas’s Status Report: 9/25

This week was a little slower on development than past weeks, but we still all chugged along.

I presented our Project Proposal on Monday and, along with everyone else, filled out feedback forms on the Monday and Wednesday presentations. It’s so exciting to see all the interesting projects the capstone teams are working on this semester!

Here’s the raw presentation (it’s a little quiet so check your volume):

I mainly focused on re-printing some of Shelley’s (our robocat test dummy smarty) parts. The main issue we ran into was that the original parts we printed suffered from “elephant’s foot” – basically the first layer was pressed down too much by the extruder head and expanded out too far to be within part tolerances. I recalibrated my printer and (after a terrible failure) got the fresh parts done around Friday.

I had to leave for Delaware on Friday morning, so Shelley will have to wait until this upcoming Monday to be fully assembled.

Before leaving, I also worked on putting together the demo parts – mainly soldering the HX711 breakout, arduino nano, power switch, coin cell holder, and other similar components. I also grabbed some cords from Roboclub and got the our Raspberry Pi set up with raspbian, net reg, and a static ip address.

Next week will see Shelley up and running (literally), the demo working, and apache web server hosting a basic “hello world” web app built in django. I’ll also wrap up the trade study on BLE modules, select one, and begin work on the schematic for the prototypical Tag pcb.

…i’ll also have to clean up our bench space…

 

 

 

 

 

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Team Status Report for 09/25/2021

As of now, no significant risk is evident based on current progress. This week primarily revolved on making sure we deliver an excellent proposal presentation.  Apart from the technical challenges discussed in the proposal, nothing else pops out for now.

One feedback we got from the TA and professors was to make sure we don’t spend a lot of time getting Shelley up and running. If by Tuesday Shelley isn’t ready, we will most likely scrap that part as she is not critical to our project and it would be better to spend time on the other components.

No changes have been made yet. This week we plan on getting a basic demo setup, which involves getting a bluetooth module setup and raspberry pi up and running with Django integrated. If that works as intended, we expect at least the initial stages of the project to move forward at the pace proposed in the GANTT chart.