This week we got a lot of integration work done, and nearly have an MVP (we just need to do some more testing). What I’ve done this week is firstly, I tested the code to run the motors concurrently. I had already tested the code for the LED concurrently (which I did update a bit, I’ll talk about that later), and I tested the motors and the signaling interface works great. The signals were based on the FST I posted for last week. One update I did make to the LED code is we decided instead of doing a time based system for when the CV detects food in one strainer (we initially had a 5 second window for people to drop food in), we now use the button which we already have, so when the user has put all their food in, the push the button and that sends a new signal to the nano. Also, since we want the LEDs to respond immediately, we replaced the cascading green with a purple, since if you press the button and the LED was in the middle of the cascade, it wouldn’t register the button push. I also started replacing dummy values with actual values. Using a constructed strainer mechanism, we decided on the starting height it should begin at, and we figured out the number of rotations needed to get it to be near the bottom without touching it. We also timed how long this takes, since in order to make the Nano do as little work as possible (since it already has a lot of work from the continuously streaming video), we do some time based things within the Arduinos. Lastly, I conversed with Christina and we agreed on signal messages, and wrote code that would communicate the signals when.
I think coming into this week, I did feel a little behind (as I assumed that since next week is our presentations that everything had to be done), but I don’t feel behind anymore. We have one strainer working 95%, which I think is enough for our MVP. We also have 2 weeks to test out everything more thoroughly, so I think we are in good shape right now.
In the next week, I hope to expand upon our MVP and get all three strainers working. The code is there (and it should work), but it’s been tested within ideal circumstances, so we need real life testing to verify that all three strainers can work.