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Team Status Report for 10/18

Progress
  • Finalized orders for manufacturing all of our PCBs, and additionally ordered all the components required for assembling each PCB.
  • Set up initial ESP32 development framework.
  • Collected raw values from MPU6050 and processed them through FIR filter.
  • BLE integration and communication working between ESP32 and STM32.
Design Changes
  • The STM32 will no longer have a custom layout on the Kar PCB, the PCB design has been changed such that the STM32 Nucleo board will instead mount into header pins on the Kar PCB. This reduces manufacturing costs significantly, reducing our PCB spend and therefore the amount of money tariffs are siphoning from our budget.
  • The STM32 no longer has FreeRTOS as part of its software stack. We are only using the BLE sequencer. Nothing has changed on the ESP32 side.
Risks & Risk management
  • Due to needing to assemble all the PCBs in-house, Nick’s scheduled slack has been wiped out. In order to manage this risk, some of his non-PCB tasks have been reassigned to other members of the team.
Part A: Impact of Product on Global Factors-written by enrique
  • Our project aligns with global trends in human-robot interaction, wearable technology, and assistive robotics. There is an increasing demand for more intuitive and accessible control systems that reduce reliance on traditional interfaces such as joysticks or keyboards. This technology could benefit applications beyond entertainment such as remote vehicle control and industrial robotics, where ease of control and safety are priorities.
Part b: Impact of Product on Cultural Factors-written by Caitlyn
  • Culturally, our design promotes inclusivity since it emphasizes intuitive and  gesture-based control that transcends language and literacy barriers. Instead of requiring users to interpret text or symbols, like the ones on controllers, our controller operates on natural human movements, making it adaptable across communities with varying cultural norms or levels of technological familiarity. By valuing ergonomic comfort and safety, our project aligns with global cultural trends toward more accessible use of technology.
part c: Impact of product on environmental Factors – Written by Nick
  • As we are creating an electronic entertainment product, our product is in a category of items which are a very frequent and common contributor to worldwide electronic waste. Generally, discarded entertainment products are disposed of due to not adequately meeting the consumers needs or due to janky/improper functionality. As such, to ensure that our product will not be a contributor to this global environmental issue, we must ensure that it has the proper and correct functionality that we have outlined in our users requirements such that our products are not also wantonly discarded.
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Nick’s Status Report for 10/18

Accomplishments

These least two weeks (the week before break and the break week), I finally sent out the orders for our PCBs to be manufactured, and then additionally sent out orders for all of the surface mounted PCB components from Digikey for each PCB. The original plan was to have both PCBs manufactured and assembled (having components placed for us), by PCBway. However, with shipping restrictions caused by tariffs we were forced to switch to JLCPCB. Therefore, I made changes to our PCB designs so that we could get cheap manufacturing from JLCPCB, but found out that with the new increase in tariff percentages getting assembly for our Kar PCB alone would incur $100 of purely tariff cost, which would wipe out the rest of our budget. As such, I changed the orders such that we are now purely paying for PCB manufacturing, and I will now perform all the assembly for the PCBs myself.

Progress/Schedule

The requirement for me to assemble the PCBs myself will undoubtedly have impacts on the schedule, not to mention the amount of delays encountered in actually ordering them. The one saving grace is that due to the PCB fabs not performing assembly, the PCBs will be delivered much quicker, meaning I can start assembly quite soon. Regardless, this will likely wipe out the time I had allocated for slack in my personal schedule.

Next Steps

Our PCBs will be delivered by EOD this coming Wednesday. As such, my plan for the coming week is to perform assembly on the PCBs and at minimum finish assembly for the glove PCB, and the finger attachment with the Adafruit board.

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Nick’s Status Report for 10/04

Accomplishments

This week I first modified the Kar PCB shape to match the one that originally ships with the Kar. Now they have virtually identical footprints and mounting holes, meaning ours should be able to slot right onto the Kar. I also worked on getting quotes from various PCB manufacturers for the manufacturing and assembly of our custom PCBs. This led to me making many small adjustments to the PCB designs to hopefully secure lower quote prices, as we only have around $300 of our budget left. Currently, the quotes from the manufacturers total around $210, but we expect that to increase once the PCB designs and BOMs are reviewed; especially with the impact of current tariffs. As such, if the final quotes for the PCBs are too high I will make a couple more optimizations and/or forego assembly on the boards to drive the prices even lower, at the cost of extra bringup work in a couple of weeks. I also soldered some sensors which the team scavenged from various sources around campus for breadboard-level testing.

Progress/Schedule

The PCB ordering process is a little behind schedule due to delays in waiting for finalized quotes, but if they are received early within the next week I believe this to have a negligible impact on overall progress.

Next Steps

This coming week I will work on finalizing the quotes for the PCBs and getting them ordered. As stated, if the costs are too high, I will instead work on PCB reworks to bring manufacturing costs down: one proposed option is mounting our nucleo debug board on our Kar PCB to vastly simplify the PCB manufacturing requirements. Otherwise, I will be working with the rest of the team on breadboard-level implementation and debug testing in preparation for deployment of our code onto our PCBs.

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Nick’s Status Report for 9/27

Accomplishments

This week I worked on completing the preliminary layouts for all of the boards. With our chosen design for our hand controls, we were able to solidify our IMU choices and get back on track for our board design schedule. Now that we have decided to use two IMUs for the hand controller, two boards were required for the glove: one for the primary microcontroller on the back of the hand, and one for the IMU on the fingers. This required some extra work like selecting connectors and a cable for connecting between the two boards, so that the power, ground and SPI lines could reach the IMU. The one bottleneck for board design is that the Kar PCB sizing is still a little bit uncertain, as we do not yet know where the holes for the Kar PCB will be. This will be solidified when the Kar arrives and is measured; it has already been ordered.

Progress/Schedule

Progress is essentially back on schedule, although ideally all the layouts would have been done by now. However, adding holes to the PCB should be a very quick process once the Kar arrives.

Next Steps

This coming week I will be working on purchasing many of the components we need for the boards, as well as potentially putting in orders for the PCBs + assembly as well. I will need to see what the order process is for boards in order to do this.

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Nick’s Status Report for 9/20

Accomplishments

This week I worked on completing the preliminary schematic for the both the glove and the kar. This primarily involved doing component selection for the different aspects of each system. For example, the kar needed a motor controller IC for the BDC motors on the COTS RC body we are purchasing. For this, I selected TI’s DRV8242-Q1, as it does all the required current sensing and has all the needed H-bridge circuitry internally. However, this necessitated the use of a level-shifter IC, as the DRV84242 has a 5V logic level and the STM32WB55 we are using only supports 3.3V logic levels. In terms of power supply, I also had to select voltage regulators as the battery inputs we are using provide  8.4V and the motor controller and the STM32 will need 5V and 3.3V as described. I decided to use a buck converter to drop from 8.4V to 5V for the greater efficiency at the higher motor driver amperage, and then a 5V to 3.3V LDO for providing a low noise input for the STM32. The ESP32 needs to step 3.7V down to 3.3V. At low amperage, the 5V to 3.3V LDO I have selected (LM3940) has a low enough dropout voltage that it can effectively regulate for the ESP32 as well, which is convenient. After performing component selection, creating the schematic in Altium for all the components was relatively straightforward. The one component I have not yet selected + put in schematic is the IMU, as the team is still discussing regarding IMU selection and/or the usage of a flex sensor in the control glove.

Progress/Schedule

Due to not having selected an IMU, my progress is slightly behind schedule. However, I am confident I can quickly select the IMU and put it in schematic at the start of next week, and continue with my tasks as normal.

Next Steps

As described, this coming week I will be selecting the IMU and doing the schematic for it to catch up to the schedule. Additionally, I will start work on the layout for the PCBs as described in our gantt chart. By next Saturday, I should have preliminary schematic and layout prepared for review.