Team Status Report for 4/23

From a hardware perspective, we were fortunately able to avoid any design changes, as we were able to integrate the thermal sensor into the design both hardware- and software-wise after many tribulations. We began battery tests and will have results for those tests on Sunday before the final presentation is due. Additionally, we will complete power unit testing with different sections of code on Sunday before the final presentation, and we hope to get a much clearer picture of how closely our design is matching our use case. One big risk is either power or battery testing failing, both of which would indicate that our system consumes more power than expected and we won’t be able to meet our battery life use case. However, should that be the case, we have a couple of risk mitigation plans that we hope will solve the problem. We still haven’t introduced specific optimizations to the code which should significantly reduce power draw, including better use of deep sleep and potentially using a light sleep in the few seconds between the processor taking readings from each sensor. Additionally, we should be able to reduce the amount of readings required to determine an occupancy change without any major sacrifices in accuracy, which would allow us to take less readings per minute and further reduce power draw, while still meeting our use case of accurately updating occupancy status within a minute of it changing.