Matthew Kuczynski’s Status Report for 2/19

This week, my main task was to develop and debug the Arduino software that could recognize the basic touch functionality. As explained last week, I chose to use the pyFirmata library to interface the Arduino with Python, so I started the week by preparing the software for actual testing later in the week. Once the parts order came in, Matt S. was able to build a circuit that we connected to the Arduino Mega, so that the software could be tested. As expected, there were many issues with the software that I had developed at the start of the week, so the later part of the week was mostly spent debugging. One struggle that I faced was learning how to use a pyFirmata iterator, which is built in to the pyFirmata library. At least to me, it was unclear that the iterator was necessary for the functionality that we needed, but once I properly added it to the code many problems were solved. The other large issue was that the time between writing the select line and reading the output was not large enough, so seemingly random values were being sent back to the Python code. For now, about 10 ms are needed in order for the values to be accurate, however we will need this to be faster in order to reach our MVP goal since we will need to loop over all of the LEDs. I feel that I am on schedule since I kept up with my Gantt chart goal this week. Next week, I will aim to help Matt S. with the PCB layout, work on frame sketches, and work on the Breadboard/Arduino integration.