This week, we tried to do some preliminary, small-scale testing of our idea. We made a small circuit and tested it with an Arduino. A couple of design changes we made involved how we plan to capture Python data. While Matt K initially experimented with controlling the Arduino with Pyfirmata, this proved to be an unreliable method of rapid data collection. Going forward, we will need an implementation that has data collection already programmed onto the Arduino, and simply use Python to receive the data over USB-serial. One other change we made was that, as we discussed as a possibility from last week, we needed to add a MOSFET buffer between the Photodiode and the Mux.
As for schedule changes, the hardware side is moving at the expected pace, and we hope to have PCBs ready to order by the beginning of March. The software side of things is moving okay, although we still haven’t made the for-certain determination that Python will be fast enough. But, from all of our Python tests so far, we have not encountered anything problematic enough to transition to C++.