I conducted a lot of research into our use case, the seating situation in the UC, and gathered a few metrics that could be used to drive our requirements and began preliminary design around these. Primarily I began to experiment with the PIR sensors for occupancy detection. I determined area of detection and explored feasible deployment techniques. We will likely focus our sensors directly downward from underneath the table. As most sensors we are looking at have a cone of detection < 120 degrees this ensures we can detect occupancy at any direction around the table with a single sensors as well as ignore the noise of passing students. I additionally started playing with code for linking our microcontrollers to the web.
Ryan’s Status Report for 2/12
This week, I was unfortunately a bit under the weather and spent time recovering. However, I still helped prepare our proposal presentation, along with getting to hear a bunch of other really cool proposals. Outside of class, I spent time looking into sensors to purchase for the hardware solution, and found a couple thermal sensors that seem like they may work, as part of an effort to order all the hardware needed for the project. I also looked into alternative methods of charging the battery, including using solar panels, but found practicality issues with those which makes me hesitant to implement them into our design. While I am a bit behind on that, and am hoping to finish that up by early next week, I am feeling better and am hopeful that I can catch up! Next week, along with getting the rest of the parts ordered, I am going to start playing around with some of the parts we already have available.