Team Status Update

This week, we worked on our ethics assignment and thought about ways in which our product would affect users in an ethical manner. One of the cases we thought about specifically was the situation in which someone could control someone else’s device without their consent. We thought about ways in which we could combat this, including limiting information collected from the user as well as security measures to make sure the user knows exactly which keystrokes do what and the risks that come with using the device. Additionally, we received our IMU this week and soldered jumper cables onto it. We will work next week on creating a demonstration for the class as well as working with the IMU to interface it with the ESP32, specifically implementing communication protocols as well as figuring out how to access information from the device. Some risks that could jeopardize the project are, because we received the IMU somewhat later in the semester due to shipping complications, we need to start interfacing and familiarizing ourselves with the software and calibration techniques that come with the device. No considerable changes have occurred to our design, and we are seemingly on track with the rest of the project.

Sarah’s Status Update 11/4

This week, I worked on polishing the PCB we have for the project. I made the traces larger on the schematic for power routing, and realized that the reason why our PCB kept short circuiting was because it was a two sided PCB. Next steps for next week would be to sand off the bottom of the PCB and solder on the pin headers needed for the board. We received the IMU as well and starting tomorrow I will working on interfacing the main board with the IMU, setting up I2C communication, and figuring out how to derive information from the IMU. Since we already soldered jumper wires to the IMU, I will need to connect the reset, interrupt, power, ground, and communication pins to the ESP32. There were no considerable changes made to our final design, and we are still on track for our final presentation. We will work on patching up our design and creating a demonstration for the interim demos next week.