In the week leading up to the beginning of Fall Break, our team’s focus was on writing the design review report. I contributed to sections such as the Abstract, Use-Case Requirements, and the relevant hardware sections within the Design Requirements, Design Trade Studies, System Implementation, and Test, Verification, and Validation sections. I also contributed to the Bill of Materials and Schedule sections.
Over Fall Break, I finished the schematics and started the board layout which means that I am behind schedule on the hardware portion of my work. I meant to finish the layout and order the board during Fall Break, but certain things came up preventing me from doing so. To mitigate this issue, I will work for the next couple of days to finalize the board and during the time when it is being fabricated and shipped to me, I will work on bringing up the Raspberry Pi so that the two can easily interface once the PCB arrives.
My goals for this coming week are to finish the board layout and order it, as well as finish setting up the Raspberry Pi with a monitor and keyboard. Finally, I want to set up a simple I2C polling procedure code with the Raspberry Pi.
As you’ve now established a set of sub-systems necessary to implement your project, what new tools are you looking into learning so you are able to accomplish your planned tasks?
One tool that I have put many hours into learning for this project is Altium Designer, which is a PCB design software. I had no experience with Altium before this course, and minimal exposure to PCB schematics and layout. Additionally, I am learning how to interface with the Raspberry Pi which is also new to me. In regards to writing code for the Raspberry Pi, I have been learning more about Python packages that are available to me for communication with I2C devices.