This week I helped out with soldering and testing both the digital and analog hall sensors. We had solid results from both, but we noticed that the analog sensor output values could easily be misread if the spacing of each piece and sensor was inadequately alligned. And the digital sensor was very accurate in detecting the presence of the manget within a 1 inch radius. We also tested the sensors with a piece of aryclic on top. Readings were not affected by any noticeable effect. Additionally, me and my team heavilty discussed and mapped out how the entire system will behave for the design report. This was a good way for everyone to be on the same page about the system design and how implementation will be done. We also recieved the mircoSD card for persistent storage on the Jetson, this was key for finishing setting up the board. I intend on doing basic testing of all the in/output pins and USB ports for which our PCB and speakers will connect from. With our PCB officially using digital sensors, the interface between the PCB and the Jetson will be simipler and less error prone, altough basic verifcation that the Jetson can get the results of the sensor inputs is necessary.
Justin’s Status Report for 10/3
This week I made some progress on getting the Nvidia Jetson set up for development. I created a bootable USB with the Jetson-speficic ISO image. I am able to boot from it, but we will need some persistant storage to really get the environment set up. After some more research into using OpenCV on embedded processing, I found that we should heavily consider adding the Jetpack 6.x software development kit to utilize CUDA processing for the CV. Once the OS is fully installed, we can fully start software development. And over time as the PCB and the camera arrive, I can start integrating these onto the Jetson and begin testing of each detection system’s accuracy and testing for improvements on the overall detection routine we have planned.
Overall I am slightly behind on schedule. I hope to have the Jetson set up this upcoming week, and once that is finished, I will meet with Kevin to make sure that we can download pyhton chess and stockfish to the board and build the system software. I have never really done much devlopment with using multiple languages in a single code base so this might cause some slight unexpected delays.
Over the next week I plan to split my time to spend on the design document and getting the entire system software stack ready for use after break. I plan on staying in Pittsburgh over Fall Break, so I can make sure that this will be completed before the second half of the semester.
Justin’s Status Report 9/26
This week we were in the phase of ordering componets for the system. Orders were placed for magets, hall effect sensors, and a Nvida Jetson. We were approved for all, and I picked up the Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano board. I am currently in the process of drawing out the block diagrams for both the system and software level. I have the first iterations of these ready, and the fully formed diagram will be ready before our slides submission. I have also been in the process of finding an affordable camera that is compatible with Jetson MIPI Camera Connectors. I will need to do some testing with the board to see wheter the 40 pin expansion header or USB interfaces are best suitable for interfacing the sensors/PCB. My current plan is to use the 40 pin header for the actual PCB and USB for the speaker. I also have downloaded and prepared the Jetson specific ISO USB for starting to work with the board. I want to have all of this completed sometime next week. Also below are current iterations of the block diagrams (first system level, then software flow diagram).
Our weekly meeting with Professor Yu was also productive. We got insight of how we should formulate our design slides, as well as discussing the instructor feedback from the proposal slides. The most significant feedback was to nail down the use case and technical requirements because some of the requirments we listed in the proposal were too vauge.
Justin’s Status Report 9/19
This week, I spent the majority of my time preparing for the proposal presentation. I was mostly practicing how to allocate time for each slide while giving myself a slight buffer for the conclusion; time management in the presentation seemed to be the most challenging aspect that I was initially unprepared for. I also spent some time this week researching some of the challenges with running an OpenCV model on embedded hardware. From my research, I was able to confirm that the NVIDIA Jetson is likely to be the best option for running the model. Still, memory constraints will be the primary challenge I need to solve, since we will also be sensing using Hall-Effect sensors memory constraints will be stricter. In the next week, I need to meet with my team to see how big the RTOS will need to be to run the chess software and the routine for checking and validating moves.