Jade Wang’s Status Report for 3/20/21

This week, I worked on finishing our Design Report Document and turning that.  Additionally, I worked on the Python script to read data from Bluetooth data from the HC-05 module. I experimented with the PyBluez library and found several complications with the library and its dependencies. I was having a lot of trouble with these dependencies so I looked into other libraries to work with. In doing so, I discovered other libraries that make use of “Bluetooth Low Energy” technology and found that this actually might be a better technology to use in comparison to just regular Bluetooth. I found that BLE is actually used for applications that do not need to send large amounts of data — which may fit our purpose since we will just be sending accelerometer and gyroscope data points, and some inputs for button clicks. Thus, I found a different library called “Bleak” that makes use of BLE technology and got it to work in a script. Here’s a terminal output of scanned Bluetooth devices using the Bleak library: 

For now, I’ll be using this as our Python Bluetooth API library. If this doesn’t workout, I will switch back to PyBluez and try to get it working again but I’m fairly confident Bleak will work and consume less power simultaneously.

I also met with Jenny and Bradley again to talk about our progress and next steps. Bradley is in the middle of working on connecting the Arduino Micro, HC-05, and the sensors. Once he gets that working, I’ll be able to try and read in bluetooth data for the HC-05 module.

I’ll continue working on writing an Arduino script as well to read in the sensor data and send it via Bluetooth so we can immediately test the hardware once it is assembled.

Given the professor’s feedback, I think we are a little behind in our project but we are working hard to get back on track, assembling parts and writing actual code to make sure our planned implementation will work and made adjustments if not.