Risks

• Rev. 2 assembly has fallen behind due to other more critical tasks for driving the car and testing the existing system
  • Assembly may occur tomorrow (05-05), but non-critical as the existing revisions work perfectly fine
• Ground control UI remains unintegrated, and likely will not be ready in time for public demo
  • On the other hand, PCAN’s plotting and trac  ing functionality proved to be quite useful, and pretty much feature-complete in terms of data visualization
• Even with the larger PittRace area, we were unable to test at the full desired range of ~600 m (max. tested ~230 m)
  • Nevertheless, we remain confident that Wi-Fi is feasible from the competition stands, given sufficient line-of-sight (achievable by mounting the directional dish to a tripod, and placing it on the roof of e.g. a vehicle)

Design changes

None.

Updated schedule

No updates. See our Gantt chart for more details.

Individual updates

• Assisted with FMS parking lot testing
  • Successfully used the system for providing immediate feedback about the effects of experimental traction control features on the vehicle’s performance
• Assisted with PittRace track testing
  • Again, the system worked well, this time oriented more towards debugging various motor controller faults and providing live battery pack status (voltage, temperature, etc.)

Schedule status

Final wrap-up continues; at this point, additional features are optional “nice-to-haves.” Some effort will also be devoted to extra module assembly and the final report.

Deliverables for 2019 May 11

• Auto-detection of XBee settings upon boot
  • This requires AT command request/response management in the XBee interfaces
• Basic Ground Control UI integration

Individual updates

• Debugged a UART issue that prevents transmission of large chunks
  • Working with Cameron to switch over to a circular DMA buffer to support these payloads for the bootloader
• Went to PittRace on a cold, rainy Friday
  • Spent most of the time debugging various technical issues on the car
  • Not enough driving time to collect meaningful data; will be revisiting the FMS lot this week

Schedule status

I have completed my mission-critical schedule items, and am continuing work on the “stretch goals.”

Deliverables for 2019 May 4

• Auto-detection of XBee settings upon boot
  • This requires AT command request/response management in the XBee interfaces
• Basic Ground Control UI integration

Risks

• Ground control application still remains underway; hopefully, it will be ready in time for the public demonstration, as it is arguably the most interactive part of our system.
• Bootloader work continues; it looks promising, but requires significant rewriting of the UART driver on the TOM to support wireless reflashing.
• Rev. 2 assembly will be occurring as soon as the board arrives on Monday.

Design changes

None.

Updated schedule

No updates. See our Gantt chart for more details.

Individual updates

• Worked with Cameron to implement various UART firewall configuration commands and properly integrate the firewall
• Implemented and tested CAN streaming over UART
  • I.e., messages received over XBee are also re-broadcasted over UART (upon enabling via user command)
  • Sending upon user command still to be implemented
• Revisited architecture for streaming data to web backend

Schedule status

I am back on track for my schedule items.

Deliverables for 2019 Apr. 27

• Auto-detection of XBee settings upon boot
  • This requires AT command request/response management in the XBee interfaces
• Basic Ground Control UI integration

Individual updates

• Implemented some application-level UART code (reading, parsing, command-line, etc.)
• Tested firewall integration
  • It works as expected, but further synchronization is required for it to be actually usable
• Assisted in preparing the vehicle for PittRace track testing
• Tested telemetry reliability at PittRace
  • Used the large 19 dBi dish antenna, mounted on a tripod
    • The range and field-of-view were quite sufficient for our test track setup
  • UDP remains effective for our purposes
  • Recorded CAN traces are generally consistent
    • Packets only dropped when the vehicle exited the track area

Schedule status

Firewall and UART integration continues; it remains feasible under our current schedule.

Deliverables for 2019 Apr. 14

• UART configuration interface and implementation

Individual updates

• Performed even more vehicle integration testing
  • In our garage environment, the link is stable enough to be functionally equivalent to a wired connection
• Adjusted UART driver to support a queue of pending messages to transmit
  • This eases synchronization and concurrent usage of the UART driver API functions by the configuration task(s)
• Reviewed and merged flash configuration library
  • Integration is still pending

Schedule status

Firewall and UART configuration integration has fallen behind due to higher-priority concerns with getting the vehicle driving in time for upcoming testing deadlines. Slack time will likely be consumed to account for this.

Deliverables for 2019 Apr. 14

• Firewall integration
• UART configuration integration

Risks

• The switch to UDP helped us with link stability, but the connection still dies for a few seconds at a time.
  • This occurs with the XBees alone (i.e. direct USB-to-serial connections, rather than plugged into TOMs)
  • It is not clear what exactly is happening, so we will continue to research it.
• Rev. 2 changes are still pending review/order.
• Range testing still to be done.
  • Testing will occur soon in the FMS breezeway and parking lot.
  • Additional testing will likely occur at PittRace; the team plans on heading there for track testing in a few weeks.

Design changes

• No design changes have been made.

Updated schedule

• No updates: We’re still on schedule in terms of PCB schematic and layout, as well as firmware implementation. (See our Gantt chart for more details.)

Individual updates

• Fixed the codec corruption bug (wrong index used when placing received data into a buffer, leading to random data being decompressed)
• Performed further testing for compressed streaming
  • The link remains robust, but “stuttering” due to dropped packets causes large “silent periods”/lag while TCP re-establishes
  • UDP will likely be used instead, as we do not guarantee ordering.
• Assisted with other team-wide firmware integration tasks.

Schedule status

My deliverables remain on schedule.

Deliverables for 2019 Apr. 6

• Firewall integration
• UART configuration integration
  • Potentially CAN configuration support as well

Individual updates

• Completed various bugfixes for the STM32 drivers.
  • This also included an upgrade to the latest HAL version, as the previous one was several years out-of-date.
• Brought up the UART drivers.
  • They have been tested successfully on a development board, and should work similarly on a TOM (further testing upcoming).
• Integrated the compression library Cameron selected and tuned (heatshrink, based on the LZSS dictionary algorithm).
  • Both encoding and decoding has been tested successfully on the TOMs.
• Assembled, reworked, and tested the Rev. 1 board pair.
  • See this week’s Team Status for more details.

Schedule status

My deliverables remain on schedule; they have been adjusted to account for the actual completion dates of various tasks from the past two weeks.

Deliverables for 2019 Mar. 30

• Further debugging is required on the Rev. 1 board pair.
• More firmware debugging is necessary, as some bugs may be present that are causing the communication link to be unreliable.
• Configuration interface design will begin.