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Sophia’s Status Report for 10/2

This week I worked on editing the PCB board and fabricating a glove with a temporary circuit for initial testing.

It turns out that the PCB I had designed had traces that were too small for power signals and vias that were also too small. I readjusted the design but I have not been able to order it yet. I will order the PCB by the end of the weekend.

All of our parts came in so I began building the circuit on some perf board. I wasn’t able to complete the circuit by today, but I will have it finished by the end of the weekend. I will also sew in the flex sensors by the end of the weekend.  Below is a photo of the semi-complete circuit:

We are on schedule still since we came up with a contingency plan for me being  unable to order and receive the PCB quickly enough.  Building the circuit on perf board will allow us to test collecting streams of data.

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Sophia’s Status Report for 9/25

This week I familiarized myself with Fusion 360 to create a PCB to more neatly house all of our hardware.

When creating the schematic for the circuit, I had to reference the spec sheets for the Arduino Nano and ICM-20948 IMU to ensure they could be secured to the board. I struggled trying to set the dimensions between pin components on the board. I wanted to create a customized component of two rows of female pins to mount the Arduino Nano and ICM-20948 IMU but this was unsuccessful as I couldn’t get Fusion 360 to recognize that two non-connected pieces should be considered one item. I ended up spacing the rows of female pins manually by referencing a grid overlay.

We ordered our parts last week but they haven’t come in yet, so that puts us a little bit behind. Also the PCB hasn’t been ordered yet and I am not sure how long it will take to be made, so this may cause further delays.  It’s crucial the PCB is designed correctly.

Next week, I will finalize the PCB design and send off the files to get it manufactured.

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Sophia’s Status Report for 9/18

This week I focused on finding and comparing different sensors to  buy for our glove. I found flex sensors from two vendors (Sparkfun and Adafruit), however the sensor itself was from the same manufacturer (SpectraSymbol). The flex sensors also came in a short size (2.5″) and a long size (4.4″). After discussion,  our team decided that we should purchase the long sensors for all fingers. I also found four different IMUs. Two of them would already be installed onto a PCB while the other two would require us to put them on a PCB ourselves. I looked at what kind of data each IMU outputs and we are leaning towards purchasing the IMUs which are already installed on a PCB as that would streamline our construction of the glove.

During our mandatory labs, we discussed the scope of our project and pared down a lot of the requirements. Instead of recognizing the entire alphabet, we are now aiming to recognize five gestures. We also pared down the design for the glove. To account for time, we decided not to make the glove wireless. A wireless feature would increase the complexity of data transmission and analysis. I updated our system sketch to account for this change.

I have also enrolled in 18-021 to learn how to fabricate a PCB because we plan to build one in order to keep the wires on the glove minimal.

In the upcoming week, we plan to order the parts to build the glove. We are on schedule if we order and receive the parts within the next week. To stay on schedule we may need to expedite shipping.