Sarah’s Status Update 9/30

This week, I further researched the right microcontroller to use for the project, and we’ve settled on the ESP-32S board. This is because there are more than 12 ADC inputs on the board, which is more than enough for our sensors, it has built in Wi-Fi and bluetooth, supports Arduino IDE and comes in a compact size of just over 2 inches. We’ve already ordered the board and it will come early next week. As such, I am a bit behind schedule since we were unable to receive the board this week. To make up for this, I will start interfacing with the board when it arrives, but further research on the board suggests the setup process is quite seamless when using Arduino IDE, so I don’t expect this process to take longer than a day. Additionally, I created a block diagram for the design we will use for the sensor to board interface, and started creating a schematic for the design report for next week. I researched different power sources we could use, including coin cells and lithium ion batteries. After researching the power consumption needed for each component, we have a ballpark estimate of how many mAh we need to sustain our device for our target battery life of 2-3 hours. Since we have already ordered the sensors needed as well, next week we will start interfacing the sensors with the board, and experimenting with different thresholds for the analog inputs. Intro to Embedded Systems greatly helped with the block diagram and schematic design for our project. Additionally, Electronic Devices and Analog Circuits helped me to better understand power rules and create circuit diagrams for the power structure.