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Joanne’s Status Report for 2.12.2022

This past week I worked on making the proposal slides with my team and I presented it during the proposal review. We got back feedback from our classmates and TA’s. One of the feedback was thinking about how we were going to implement the hologram visual portion of our project.

Thus for the latter part of the project, I worked on Unity to create the layout of the hologram. In order to project a hologram onto our plexiglass pyramid, we needed to place four perspectives of a 3d model around the base of the plexiglass pyramid. My main responsibility was to use Unity to create the four perspective view of a random 3 model and then export it to the web using Webgl. I placed a photo of the unity scene when it is running below. The white lines are drawn in by me to illustrate how the pyramid would be placed in respect to this view.

I exported the Unity scene onto a web browser so we can place the pyramid on top of my ipad (which holds now the link to the unity scene with the four views of a model). Edward and I helped Anushka in laser cutting the pyramid plexiglass she designed. An image of a basic hologram model that we completed is on our team status report page for this week.

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Edward’s Status Report for February 12

In order for our idea to work, we need an array of distance sensors. We need those sensors to be tightly packed and there does not exist an off the self solution for that. So, we decided to make our own custom PCB breakout board. We decided on the VL6180X proximity sensor by STM, since it can sense up to 5mm to ~150mm, which is about right for the length of a typical forearm. So, I sought out to make a PCB containing an array of these sensors. I built our PCB design off of this, since it provided an open source Eagle schematic. I figured building off an existing, working design will hopefully ensure that our design will be functional and make it so that we will have to iterate less.
So, this week, I worked on finalizing the first iteration of our PCBs on Eagle. I realized we needed to make two PCBs since I could not fit all of the SMT components unto a single one without making it too large. So, we will have two PCBs on our wearable device: one containing an array of VL6180X sensors and another containing all the “support” components like voltage regulators, resistors, etc.
I prepared them to order on JLCPCB and generated the BOM and CPL files that were needed.  I will need to talk to a TA or a professor to verify that my design will work.


Sensor Array PCB


“Support Components” PCB

I also helped lasercut a rough prototype of our hologram pyramid with Anushka and Joanne.

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Anushka’s Status Report for February 12

This week was our first week working directly on the project. We spent the first half preparing for our proposal presentation. We discussed bringing in a hologram component into our project to fulfill our use case further in providing a novel experience to interact with 3D models. I contributed information on the slides related to this new addition and began coming up with requirements for this component. One of my main goals this week was to improve our explanation of our use cases; our TA gave good advice on thinking of our proposal as a business pitch, so I wanted to incorporate as many applications of our project in the presentation.

Going further on this, I began researching hologram pyramids. They are easy to create from everyday plastic items, but we decided to look into clear acrylic sheets in our first round of prototyping. I visited IDeATe and found a piece of acrylic, but by the time we wanted to use it, IDeATe was closed. I began by creating a model on SolidWorks and cutting it out as shown below.

Model of Initial Pyramid

Trial 1 Demo

However, this was a naive approach, as I didn’t consider any proportions of the sides or the angles involved. As a team, we found that the Pepper’s Ghost pyramid is a more accurate way to create the hologram, and I quickly remodeled and cut the plastic. Unfortunately, we still couldn’t achieve the desired outcome.

Trial 2 Demo

Even though the hologram becomes more relevant at the end of the project, it’s important that we start looking into it now. I wouldn’t say that I’m behind, but I do think that this does not require a lot of time and can be finished over the next two weeks. Over the next week, I hope to do more research into holographic illusions and see if there are either improvements or alternatives.