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Kanon’s Status Report for 3/6

This week, I continued working on web application development. I implemented our own login/registration functionality by using Django authentication. I had some trouble because the default authentication by Django only accepts the pair of username + password while it does not accept the pair of email + password. Because the users log in via Google OAuth2, using their email address, I might change the authentication settings in more detail to make the login parameters the same.

I also researched some more about AWS credits. It seems like EC2 costs the most so I would need to remind myself to turn off EC2 everytime I’m not testing/using the website once I deploy it. Moreover, for the notification/alert, it turned out there’s a website called Twilio that provides SMS API, so I’m going to use this API to send out notifications.

Lastly, as other team members did, I worked on the presentation by coming up with a more detailed block diagram and solutions for the web application component. I will also be the one to present next week so I have been practicing the presentation too.

Next week, I will start setting up DynamoDB and try to link the dataset to Django backend so whenever a user changes the parameters/value on the website, that data will be sent and stored within the database.

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Hiroko’s Status Report for 3/6

This week, I continued to do more research on the specific types of sensors and equipment that we would need to physically build the greenhouse system. Using the information I gathered and the feedback we got from our weekly meeting with the instructors, I refined the shopping list and block diagram that I created last week. After that, I filled out the purchase request forms for the items on the updated shopping list, and filled out the form to request TechSpark access in order to wire the sensors to the ESP32 and solder the temperature sensor. 

While processing our purchase request forms, Quinn contacted me about our order from Home Depot saying that it may be better for me to pick the items up directly from Home Depot since Home Depot uses their own drivers, which requires us to arrange a specific delivery date and time to receive the order. Therefore, I took the bus to the Wilkins Home Depot in order to pick up the LED plant grow lights on Friday. I was also able to drop by HH 1307 in order to pick up a breadboard and some wires on Friday as well.

Also, we spent time this week putting together the design review presentation slides. I added the slides that had to do with the hardware aspect of our project, and created a visual image of what I imagine the greenhouse will look like when it’s assembled.

Overall, I think I am on schedule. I’m hoping that the orders will start arriving next week, so that I can start assembling the greenhouse and programming the ESP32 boards. I will also be working on the design review report next week with my teammates.

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Team Status Report for 2/27

This week, we focused on the refinement of our design so that we can get prepared for the design review presentation for next next week. As we focused on each of our parts, we hope to talk about our ideas on Monday/Wednesday to put them all together.

Hiroko worked on her hardware component, coming up with a block diagram and shopping list which helped us go over the scope of the project and organize what we really need.

Sarah has downloaded OpenCV and started to go through some tutorials and learn basic algorithms such as edge and color detection.  She will continue learning algorithms and OpenCV functionalities next week to get more specific ideas for the project.

Kanon has implemented OAuth to web application and will work more on the design and web development next week. She will also look into AWS database installation and pricing.

Next week, we will start ordering the parts we need and ask TA/Professor about borrowing Raspberry PI boards so that we can get started on building up hardware systems.

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Hiroko’s Status Report for 2/27

This week, I practiced presenting our proposal presentation earlier in the week, and continued to do more research on the specific types of sensors and equipment that we would need to physically build the greenhouse system. Using the information I gathered on these topics, I started to create the block diagram for the hardware side of the greenhouse. Drawing the diagram helped me break down the project into smaller parts, and helped me think about the small details that I hadn’t noticed before.

 

Also, taking into account the feedback that we received from our status reports that we submitted last week, I created a rough shopping list of the parts that we would need to build the greenhouse (excluding the camera, since Sarah is in charge of them). There definitely needs to be more work done on the shopping list, since I need to contact the ECE lab to see if I can borrow some parts, and I realized there are some parts that I do not know if I need them until I start building the greenhouse.

Overall, I think I am on schedule. Next week, I hope to complete the shopping list by communicating with the TA and the ECE lab technician, and start submitting purchase request forms. Also, I would like to finalize my block diagram and integrate it with the software side of the project, and work on other parts of the design review presentation slides.

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Kanon’s Status Report for 2/27

This week, I mainly focused on the basic design of our web application. Currently, I’m thinking of having a single page layout of the website as it would be easier for the user to navigate through. Moreover, because the users will be using this web application on their phone, this single page layout will look like a normal iPhone/Android App. Therefore, there is no need to develop an actual smartphone application.

I heard that implementing Google OAuth with Django is a bit of hassle, so I also decided to implement Google OAuth login this week. It did turn out to be much harder than I expected it to be. There are many ways to implement Google OAuth but some information was outdated, so I had to go through all of them and gather knowledge to come up with the most optimal way to implement this API. Eventually I was able to make it work, but I did not have enough time to look into how to register with Google OAuth.

Lastly, I have set up AWS related accounts and got credits from Tamal. I have read through the basic documentation of DynamoDB and figured out it will cost every time when we try to write/read data to it. The rough calculation gave me $1 per month, which definitely is feasible under our budget. However, I will need to look into EC2 costing so that the total operation cost on AWS will be under $50.

Next week, I will start implementing CSS designs and refurbish registration +  login/logout functionality as it currently only supports Google OAuth login. The users should be able to register with email while also  being able to register with a Google account. I will further need to look into how the Django database is storing Google emails because we might use this information to send notifications/alerts to users.

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Sarah’s Status Report 2/27

While the presentations were going on and Hiroko presented, my teammates and I decided to study our individual parts of the project. I downloaded OpenCV on my computer and tested some of its functionality . I also looked into the best cameras and boards to maintain a 24/7 live stream. With the OpenCV, I looked into edge detection, how the module recognizes and categorizes certain objects, and how to separate colors, as all these aspects will be key to the defect and growth stage detection. I also tried to figure out how OpenCV categorizes shapes and the size of objects.

The team as a whole is on task, and we will be meeting next Monday to gather what we’ve been working on, and the equipment and materials we need to order. On my part, I would’ve liked to learn more this week about applying CV on plants in specific and get a rough idea of how I will measure some components such as how to figure out the degree of bending of a stem, but hopefully more tutorials will help me understand my part of the project.

I am hoping that we know what to buy and let Abha or other TAs know by Monday and Wednesday the latest. I am also hoping that we can rent some boards like a Raspberry Pi, as that would help our budget. On my part, I am hoping to look into more tutorials and edge detection/ color classification of OpenCV throughout the weekend.

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Hiroko’s Status Report for 2/20

This week, I did some more research on the specific types of sensors and equipment that we would need to physically build a greenhouse system. Since we need to send the sensor data and commands to the system over wifi, I looked into “smart” sensors and water irrigation systems that come with the capacity to connect to wifi, as well as ways to connect analog sensors to wifi using various equipment such as RPi, STM32, ESP32, Arduino Uno, etc. We needed to decide on how we were going to water the plants, so I did some research on the pros and cons of various watering systems such as sprinklers, drip irrigation, surface irrigation, etc.

We also took into consideration the feedback we got from our abstract and decided we needed a more quantitative requirement for our greenhouse. Using the research Sarah did on plants, specifically pea shoots, I came up with specific metrics (temp, soil moisture percentage, light intensity) to determine the success and effectiveness of the greenhouse.

Using the information I gathered on these topics, I created slides in the proposal presentation that had to do with the hardware and sensor systems of our project. Overall, we are on schedule to submit our proposal presentation slides on time and give our presentation next Tuesday.

Next week, I hope to narrow down the equipment that we need for our project by doing more research and receiving feedback from our proposal presentation. I plan on making a spreadsheet with specs and prices of the various components to make sure we have everything that we need within the budget. I also plan on looking up documentation and repos of similar projects that are online.

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Kanon’s Status Report for 2/20

This week, as my other teammates have, I worked on making a proposal presentation slides and did some research about receiving/ sending data between arduino and a website using wifi. There are already many similar projects to ours so I went through their projects and saw what kind of difficulties they had and how they overcame them so that if we face a similar issue, it would be much easier to deal with it. From looking at these sources, it seems like using arduino and ESP with AWS DynamoDB is a good idea to receive/send data between hardware and software.

I’ve also thought about some basic web designs that can be used for our application but I would like to dive deeper into this because our web application should be really intuitive to use, and I want to keep it as concise as possible.

Next week, I will start working on coding the basic structure of the web application (HTML + CSS) and research about how I should set up DynamoDB and link that to our backend (JS / Django).

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Sarah’s Status Report for 2/20

This week, I went into deeper research on what environmental factors we need to consider for the growth of plants in a greenhouse. I specifically researched pea shoots. We took into consideration the feedback we got from our abstract and divided up work from the feedback, specifically I addressed the RealSense camera being too expensive and possibly not necessary for the scope of the project, clarification about whether we would be training ML models or implementing a CV application, and choosing plants that would be best for testing in the time frame we have. After thorough research, I found the pea shoot to work best for our project as it is ready to harvest as soon as 3 weeks, and if the pea shoot is successful we can look into including more quickly growing plants for our tests. We decided to go in the CV application direction by detecting growth stages and defects of plants based on plant color, size, and shape. We decided with using cheaper but still high quality cameras like the RPi IR-Cut Camera V2, which also has night vision. Below is a link of the progress we made this week to build our presentation, with each member’s research underneath their name.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kj2HFveDk5Tp5_XJ2rWFR_U-8fiJ47mEStU7owtN7NU/edit?usp=sharing

After researching further from Monday, on Wednesday we began creating the proposal presentation. I worked on clarifying the use case in our introduction, the computer vision and live stream monitoring requirements points, the testing process, quantitative results we expect when working with pea shoots, technical challenges we may find in the computer vision application, and the tasks on my part. We met on Friday to check in with each other’s progress and to clear up any confusion about the proposal.

Currently, we are on schedule as our team just finished our proposal presentation slides and submitted it to Abha for critique. We are hoping Abha will get back to us about it tomorrow and before submitting the slides the group can meet one more time to practice the pitch.

Next week, we hope to start on the design documentation and receive more feedback from other TAs and professors. I also plan on getting familiar with OpenCV by messing around with the library on my computer locally, and researching more on cameras and boards that would suit the requirements of the CV application.

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Team Status Report for 2/20

The significant risks that we face at this point in our project is to make the scope too large or too small, and to misjudge the requirements that we determine are necessary for our greenhouse to be effective. In order to manage these risks, we are doing as much research as we can, and making sure that we communicate with each other so that we are all on the same page about the envisionment of the final product. Also, we are planning to discuss and reflect the feedback that we get from our project proposal presentation to ensure that our scope, requirements, and overall future plans are on track.
This week, we came up with a more concrete design of our system with more quantitative requirements and testing metrics to add to the project proposal presentation. We also created a broad schedule to split up the work between each team member and into smaller tasks.