This week marked the beginning of the assembly and integration phases of the project. We first finalized a design for the helmet and glove. We designed and 3D printed ArUco markers to replace the cardboard ones we had been previously using and mounted them to the glove. We also printed an enclosure for the Arduino Micro, and began laying out the associated components on the glove. We also mounted the camera to the helmet. On the integration side of things we managed to establish a serial connection between the Jetson and the Due. However, we are still having issues getting the RS-485 connection to work, so as of now we are still debugging the hardware for this serial bus. We also staged the software for the Micro-to-Due bus so that assembling that hardware circuit will go smoothly when we return to the lab.
This week we managed to make up for some of the time we lost when we fell behind previously, but we still have catching up to do to get back on track. We would have liked to finish the RS-485 bus between the Jetson and the Due, but since we have made progress on that faster than expected we do not expect that it will take much time. Additionally, the assembly of the helmet and glove has been going smoothly, and we have already begun planning for the final assembly which should allow us to complete it quickly. To further facilitate integration, we have also worked on refactoring of our already existing code on the Jetson to provide for more flexibility and extensibility with regard to transmitting/receiving/visualizing data.
We intend to spend much of tomorrow ensuring at least one of the two serial buses work so that we can demonstrate part of our sensor components generating MIDI signals for the interim demo. We also intend to finish the baseline sensor data processing this week. Once this is done all that will be left to do is finish integration and begin running tests to polish the product.