This week I have spent a significant number of hours dealing with hardware issues. I received my Photon this week so I attempted to set it up to use instead of the Arduino but was unsuccessful. The first issue I ran into was simply setting up the Photon. For some reason I kept on getting error messages when trying to name and claim the Photon after connecting it to wifi. After researching this issue and experimenting with different approaches I was able to fix the problem. However, I ran into a second issue, which I was not able to solve. The issue I’m having with the Photon is that it constantly remains in the safe mode (red and blue status LED blinking slowly) as opposed to being in the connected mode (cyan status LED blinking slowly), which it’s supposed to be in. Even if I manage to put the Photon in connected mode it immediately goes back into safe mode as soon as I flash code to the device (the Photon does not execute code while in safe mode). I tried many potential solutions I found online but none of them worked. As a result, I have decided to keep using the Arduino because using the Photon is not necessary and it is not worth spending more time trying to fix the issue. I have sent a request to Particle describing the issue I’m having so hopefully they will get back to me with useful information.
Before I received the Photon, I was also experiencing a problem with the Arduino, which is the same issue I was having during the meeting on Monday. I was not able to get IMU readings constantly: one moment the I2C would work and the next there would be some I2C connection issue. This week when I was trying to connect the second IMU to the Arduino, I noticed the problem had become much worse. After trying to figure out the problem, I concluded that the wires I received with my hardware from CMU are most likely causing the connections to be inconsistent. I have thus ordered some male to male wires from Amazon, which will hopefully arrive soon.
In the meantime, I am working on the AHRS algorithm code to improve the accuracy of the 3D positioning. It is not ideal because I am not able to get my own IMU readings for the reason explained above but I am using the datasets Dan got from his IMUs. This coming week, I will continue to work with Dan to improve the accuracy of the 3D positioning and I will try to get IMU readings again when I receive the wires. I will also have to meet with my teammates this week so we can discuss and plan a more detailed schedule for the next two weeks.
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