This week, I continued working with the serial communication between Jetson and the Arduino. While working on it, I ran into a bug that when the Jetson continues listening to the Arduino in a loop, the first communication of data from the Arduino to Jetson to Arduino works, but the second communication always causes a port error. I was not able to find a way around this yet, so for now I made it so that the python script stops after the first communication. The camera also stopped working at one point when I tried to integrate the image capturing functionality into the Jetson code. The Jetson could not recognize the camera, even though it was working before. While I was not able to find the cause, it started working again after restarting the Jetson a couple of times. So for now, my system is now able to detect a nearby object, send a signal to the Jetson to capture the image, save the image, and then send a number back to the Arduino to turn the motor left or right based on the output (the CV algorithm will be run on the image to produce the actual output, which will replace the random number function that I have now. Currently the biggest problem in the hardware system is that the Jetson is a bit unstable, where occasionally the Jetson is unable to recognize the USB port or the camera as mentioned earlier. I hope that I will be able to find a cause for this, or replace some parts with new ones if that would be a fix.
I am currently on schedule, as my system now is able to be integrated with the other subsystems. I will also meet with my teammates tomorrow to work more on integrating the hardware with the CV and the web app before the interim demo.
To verify that my subsystem works, I would need to have the mechanical parts as soon as possible so that I can start testing with the actual recyclable/non-recyclable item to see if the system meets the user requirements for the operation time and the durability of the servo motor. I do not have the mechanical parts yet, which will be attached to the hardware in the upcoming weeks. However, I was able to create a tiny version of our actual product to test that the servo motor can turn a flat platform to drop an object by attaching some stuff:
