Crystal’s Status Report – 9/20

So far, I’ve worked on shaping the project by carefully identifying the right components and mechanisms to make it feasible. I started by analyzing the cost and scalability issues of giving each pin its own actuator, realizing that this would exceed our $600 budget, so I explored alternatives like row-based actuation and column scanning. This week I listed different position based actuator parts we could use and narrowed it down to a few. On the electronics side, I mapped out how to divide responsibilities between a Raspberry Pi (for real-time depth capture and heightmap processing) and an STM32 (for deterministic actuator control), since the Pi can’t handle precise timing and the STM32 can’t handle heavy vision workloads. I also investigated specific ways to test latency, weighing options like software timestamps versus high-speed video, to ensure I can measure each subsystem’s delay as well as the full end-to-end pipeline.