This past week, we had to redirect our project because of the novel coronavirus. As a team, we discussed and decided how our project needed to change, now that we can not meet in person.
The web application will not need to change much, if at all. The front-end remains essentially unchanged. The back-end now needs to make remote calls to the smart devices over the internet, instead of over the local network like we had planned in the beginning of the project.
Obviously, the hardware layer will have to change quite a bit. Essentially, we’ll emulate the hardware layer using software. We thought of a few ways to do this, including using QEMU software and another webapp. Ultimately, qemu introduced unnecessary complexity into the project, so we are going with the secondary web application. This was a difficult decision to make, but ultimately we don’t have many other options. Also, once this gets built, the software layer can be a good start to test the system if we want to build new features.
The Interaction Layer will also have to change significantly. The interaction layer, which acts like a translator between the hardware (now software emulated) and the webapp, will have to mounted on emulated hardware instead of real hardware. We don’t have experience with this, so we don’t know how difficult this could turn out to be. It can’t be stressed enough how important communication is for the development of the interaction layer. This talks to both the webapp and the hardware layer, so there are double the opportunities for misunderstandings and miscommunication.
Here is an updated GANTT chart for the rest of the semester:
