Author: mbalajee

This week, I was able to test our Hall Effect Sensors, which arrived late.  I designed the circuit needed for each tile and tested out our magnets. I was also able to place the order for the magnets, on my own, to ensure it arrives on time, and we can decide our magnetic strength range for each unique piece. On the software side, I was able to help make our code modular, and separate it into different scripts. I was able to make major progress on the move validation, and integration with lichess.org. Our code currently has endpoints that can be connected to for full functionality. Once our PCB arrives and we can connect the hardware portion.

Currently, my progress is on schedule. I was able to catch up over spring break and keep our progress on schedule till this week. We have been behind on our hardware side, however, Edison and I have been able to catch up on a lot of the work on the software side of our project.

By next week, we hope to have our board laser cut, and PCB tested and ready for use. e also plan to have our pieces made (with magnets inside the piece and pegs placed at the bottom), and 3D print all the pieces. We plan to have some form of established communication between our board and RPi.

For this week, I was mainly focused on assessing the different sections of our design report, to ensure we tackle every portion of our project with careful consideration. Apart from that, we were able to finalize our pieces and have them 3D printed for our first prototype. Our sensors are still stuck with the vendor, which has pushed our sensor testing off by one more week. We have been in touch with Quinn and our TA about this.

Currently, we followed a similar strategy to last week and moved our schedule around to account for the delay of the sensors. We got a head start on our web app, scripts that will run on the RPi, and also communication between the RPi and lichess.org. This has helped us stay somewhat on track with our schedule and get some future work out of the way.

Next week, we hope to receive our sensors, test them and send the PCB for fabrication. We also plan to finalize our board and the components we will be attaching to it. Apart from this, we plan to work on integrating the sensors and the RPi to ensure we have proper data collection.

After this week’s design report, we were able to come up with different subsystems required for our system, and we realized that we have some extra learning to do for PCB Fabrication, using an RPi and uploading scripts to it, communicating between RPi and web app and RPi and physical board. We plan on reading through datasheets for different components in our circuitry and on our board, to help us get an efficient circuitry and have correct connections and functionality.

For this week, I was able to design our board on Rhino, and 3D print a test piece to make sure our pieces and board were as expected. I was able to access the Stockfish API and use it to generate and play a game.

This week, we had to reorder our Hall Effect Sensors as we initially ordered the wrong parts. This has set us back a little bit, so we were able to catch up on other tasks and get ahead on them to make up for this loss of time.

By next week, we hope to test our circuit and start/send our board for PCB Fabrication. We also hope to have our chess board modeled with Braille notations and spaces for external elements. We also plan on setting up our RPi and uploading our scripts to make sure we can proceed with further development of the accessible features.

This week, I worked with Juan and started working on our circuit to detect magnetic fields with the Hall Effect sensors. We decided to try mimicking the circuit on a breadboard, before sending it out for PCB fabrication. We were able to place orders for specific parts we need for our project, and we started working on designing our chess board. We are planning on making the current designs for the chess board, as accessible as possible (for our visually impaired users) by adding braille annotations.

Our progress for the project has been on track. We were able to modify our schedule and push our goal of sending out the board for fabrication a couple of weeks later. We instead plan on working on a breadboard, and perfecting the circuit before fabrication. Edison has been able to make a good progress on the website and has it connected to lichess.org currently.

By next week, we hope to be able to print out our board, test our circuits out and be able to detect pieces on the board on our web app (if possible).

The majority of this week was involved in presentations and finalizing our abstract and project proposal. I was able to make progress on delegating work, and I have started work on learning Eagle to better understand the process for PCB fabrication, as it is a new area for all of us. I was able to follow some online tutorials, and gain a basic understanding on what PCB Fabrication is and how it is done. I plan to use the virtual andrew machines to access eagle and get started on working on the PCB fabrication for our board. 

Currently, we are just on track with our schedule, however, I would like to move a little ahead of schedule to give us more time for testing and integration. I plan to do this by completing the PCB Fabrication this upcoming week, and getting started, and hopefully completing the 3D printing of our custom board. 

By next week, we hope to have a basic board printed out, the PCB order sent out, and start working on our website to connect to platforms like lichess.org. To help us stay ahead of schedule, I plan to work on the website with Edison, while Juan Mejia works on the integration of the board with the arduino and converting the analog signals into digital signals, before transmitting it to the Raspberry Pi.