Mrinmayee Status Report 2/19

This week I focused on finding sensor components to prepare for the design review. I settled on the HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor after reading an article where the sensor is interfaced with a NodeMCU (https://randomnerdtutorials.com/esp8266-nodemcu-hc-sr04-ultrasonic-arduino/). The cost of each sensor is approximately at most $2, according to amazon pack options (https://www.amazon.com/Ultrasonic-Sensors/s?k=Ultrasonic+Sensors). Additionally, the sensor requires 5V for power, so I made the decision to leave the idea of solar energy for our initial prototype and use batteries instead. Some details about the different choices of batteries are explained in this article (https://diyi0t.com/best-battery-for-esp8266/). Next, I started to research points to consider when trying to detect a parked car. If the sensors are placed along the curbside in regular intervals of about 8 ft (about half the length of an average car), then whenever there are 3 sensors in a row that are not detecting any objects, it is guaranteed that there is enough space for a car. I will continue to think about the software vs hardware tradeoffs between having a one-to-one or one-to-many relationship between the nodemcu unit and sensors. Currently, I am on track for the tasks from the gantt chart.