During this week, I mainly researched Web Frameworks, Databases, Object-Detection Algorithms, met with my team during class time, discussed through messenger when we were home, and created an overall (and potentially near final draft) design diagram of our product.
After doing research, I have decided that we will use Flask rather than Django for our web framework. Why? Even though I am familiar with Django and haven’t used Flask before, Django is very comprehensive and for the purposes of our web application, we don’t need all of the features that Django provides. As a result, a more lightweight framework (Flask) will be faster, and since it can do all the things I need it to do, it made more sense to me to move on with Flask. Also, Flask is python-based, which is my most comfortable language.
As for the database, I decided to move forward with MySQL with the help of SQLAlchemy. This is because I have experience with MySQL, it’s an ORM structure, and it’s not lightweight. Essentially SQLAlchemy is a library that allows users to write python code that will translate to SQL. Having SQLAlchemy will improve my implementation speed and process since I am much more comfortable with Python than SQL.
In terms of the Object Detection Algorithms, we have seen many. We decided that instead of trying to decide which one to stick with for the semester, we are going to try implementing a few of the ones we have researched. Then, we will evaluate the performances of each and choose the best one.
Lastly, I spent time during the tail-end of the weekend (Friday and Saturday) to create an overall design diagram and tried to be as specific as possible. This diagram encompasses our entire project and also includes submodules for modules that cannot be explained with just one block.
Overall, I spent roughly ~10 hours this week on Capstone.
My progress I believe is behind. I wanted to create the base web application and test out the RPI and ARDUCAM. I did not do either this week and I intend to work much harder next week to compensate so that I can get back on track and/or be ahead of schedule. If I am not on track (standard is based on our defined schedule from the previous presentation) by this time next week, I will ask my TA/Professor for assistance on how to catch up and inform them that I am behind.
In the coming week, I plan to achieve the following: Watch a tutorial video on Flask/SQLAlchemy, create the base web application, start designing the Front-End UI, test out the RPI/ARDUCAM (not just taking pictures because that was supposed to be this week, but also test the transfer of data to a local machine), and work on the design presentation.