Posted on

Jorge’s Status Report Apr. 30th

This week we worked together to finish up the physical aspects of demo, finalizing the mouse housing and having a full setup ready for demo. Some small adjustments will be made next week before demo (like a new strap for the foot mouse and a chord extension) but overall we are ready to demo at this point.

This weekend we have to work on the poster and next week on the final report. For the demo itself we started conducting some testing using typical applications and it seems to work very well, we need only make small software adjustments for demo day.

I believe we are on schedule to get everything done. We have MVP and just need to make small edits here and there to make it easier to demo for people.

Posted on

Team Status Report Apr. 23

This week we worked on the final parts necessary to have a complete demo with fully functioning pieces. The only internal issue we have a is a delay occurring when switching from mouse to keyboard functions on the keyboard but we have a work around and are implementing that currently.

 

Besides that we have half the housing for the mouse finished, the top plate that straps to the show below. The mouse circuit we are using we already have and a backup as well, we have it tested and it works perfectly, we just need a 3D printed piece which will attach to the top plate in the image below.

The mouse we are implementing is the same as our original idea, which we felt we were more capable of finishing it on this tight time frame. All in all, we are on schedule to finish everything finally, although we had to work some extra hours to get the housing and things finished.

 

The keyboard housing has also been finished with a key-guard included. Currently the key-guard is not attached while we decide if we want it as an option or not, but attaching it is no issue if we wanted to.

Posted on

Jorge’s Status Report Apr. 23

This week we all worked together for the most part on getting the housing finished. We have reverted back to our original mouse idea and we have a fully functioning mouse, we just need to make the housing for it. Currently the top plate for the housing that attaches to the shoe is done and we are working on 3D printing the bottom part which will contain the circuit.

We also worked on the housing for the keyboard which is virtually finished. It has a key-guard and rubberized bottom. We just need to work on some software issues when switching from mouse to keyboard functionality but we have a good work around.

Posted on

Team Status Report April 16

This week all members of the team were sick; Jorge had strep throat, Carlos with Covid, and Ji with the flu. This has been a difficult week to for work, with our entire team being out of commission and no work getting done but hopefully we will recover promptly and make up for lost time next week.

Posted on

Jorge’s Status Report Apr. 16

This week I did not manage to get work done. I fell very ill with an infection and had to take antibiotics for fever, headache, and sore throat. This is not been the most productive week for the team as a whole as all of our members were sick, I with strep, my teammates with covid.

It is going to be hard going forward to see if we have enough time to implement a mouse idea which we have and could be better than our mouse option, but we have to wait until the team is back in one piece.

Posted on

Team Status Report Apr. 9

We finally have a full board up and running and tested with our Pi. The only functionality we need to add is the ability to produce a mouse click with the keyboard. Currently we can do keyboard type inputs or Mouse type inputs but not both so we need to work on the software and switch between the two when necessary. Otherwise, the matrix scanning and the PCB as a whole is working great.

 

Posted on

Jorge’s Status Report Apr. 9

We finally got our PCBs this week so I took the time to solder on all the diodes and switches and put on some key caps. It was a little hard to keep the switches straight since the switches we ordered did not come with the two mounting holes for some reason, so the switches are not completely straight but thats okay since the key-guard will fix that issue somewhat. Regardless, if we need to populate another board that is also something that we can do since we have 5 of them.

I tested the board with Carlos and it all seemed to work perfectly. All that is left for the full functionality is on the software side.

Posted on

Jorge’s Status Report Apr. 2

This I ordered the PCBs for our team after making some quick layout changes to make it easier to interface with the Pi.

Below is the board with the set of row pins routed underneath and the column pings routed on top. The extra pins are not necessary but I left them in, in case we wanted to add more buttons later on and I saw no harm in it. Right now, our layout hasn’t changed much from our older one, but there is a new button (very bottom right) to be used for the toggle repeat feature we intend to implement.

It is effectively a variation on thiss layout below, with the right most keys shifted up half a button length (10mm) and an added special button on the bottom right and an added button on the top right (an escape key we forgot to add earlier).

I ordered 5 of these boards as it was the minimum from JLCPCB, but they were fairly cheap, so if we need to order more I think it will be okay. The only issue is that if we do need to make changes to the layout I am worried about the time it will take to get the board shipped.

 

Posted on

Team Status Report Apr. 2

This week we worked on the demo for the board. We wont be able to get out PCB in time for the demo so we will demo on our breadboarded circuit. Besides not having the PCB and keyboard switches we do currently have the correct diodes and the operation of the breadboard should be identical to what the PCB will do.

We worked on the software and made some tweaks so that it behaves like a typical keyboard and made sure that it worked with our application of choice (Minecraft). After some fiddling with keyboard protocols we managed to get it to behave exactly like a typical keyboard and function exactly like we wanted it to for the demo.

The operation of everything looks really promising and we basically just have to get our PCBs and switches to get the keyboard fully operational. We feel we have a decent chunk of the sub-system finished to show off at demo. From this point on, the difference from the demo board to the full PCB board should be mostly superficial so we feel confident we can get it all working as intended which gives us time to start working on our foot controlled mouse. For the demo, we will likely use a regular mouse in its place.

 

The following is our breadboarded circuit in operation. (This layout will be changed for the demo so that its more pleasant to operate) Just including it to show what a simple 2×2 matrix looks like on the breadboard and show we got it working. Scaling this up to more buttons is superficial at best so it should be no problem to get the entire board working once we get the PCBs.

We plan to have a layout for the demo that allows movement in Minecraft which only requires a few buttons on the breadboard (wasd).

Posted on

Team Status Report March. 26

This week we received our diodes and were able to set up a 2×2 prototype of our board. Ee will order the PCB from whichever board-house is most convenient and fast. Besides that, there didn’t seem to be any immediate issues with the PCB so ordering it after this point shouldn’t be too big of an issue.

We reached out to CLASS about finding someone with Cerebral Palsy but have yet to receive a response.

Progress was slow this week since we only really met on Monday because Tuesday was our Ethics Meeting. Progress should be back on track next week.