Category: Mukundh Balajee’s Status Reports

This week, I focused on ensuring our PCBs were fabricated correctly and properly connected to the 9th MUX.  I also helped ensure we can have our PCB neatly placed and positioned within our encasing, to provide minimal clutter and easily accessible. I was also able to run a number of tests on our software systems, to ensure that the move and board legality checker has minimal latency (<25ms) and the sub-system was able to catch all illegal board states and moves. I was able to test the board components for accessibility (braille, piece identification, ease of understanding the board), and decided to modify our braille tiles to be larger to ensure clear comprehension by our blind users. I was also able to provide that our button and speaker circuit work accurately and ensure that they can be powered by our RPi/Arduino, without affecting the performance of our system. I was also able to run some power tests on our button and speaker circuit while keeping in mind the voltage requirements of our PCBs. Finally, I was able to determine the latency for communication between the Arduino and RPi (<80ms), and also the vocalization system(~<500ms). I was able to ensure that our sub-systems were within their individual latency requirements for MVP and plan to reduce latency post-MVP.

We are slightly behind schedule because of a delay in the arrival of our magnets and PCBs, however, we plan to finish the integration by this weekend and start our system tests and integration tests next week, before our final demo.

By next week, we hope to have our project completely done and ready to be used!

This week, I was able to help Edison solder the PCB. I focused the majority of my time on the piece detection logic, by choosing accurate magnets and magnetic strengths for each piece. After that, I was able to write Arduino code to generate a move based on the number of sensors we had (one fabricated row). This way I was able to generate a move and send the move over to be validated and sent to lichess.org.

We are currently slightly behind schedule because of delays in our orders for PCBs and magnets. However, we have been able to make significant progress with fabricating our PCBs and have at least a semi-functional board by this weekend.

This next week, I hope to be able to integrate the MUX logic with our existing software logic and connect the PCBs. I also hope to be able to attach the speaker to the board and help complete the board to make it a functional product. This week, I also hope to be able to perform as much testing as possible to ensure the integrity of the product.

This week, I ensured communication between different systems worked as expected. This includes connecting our Arduino, and RPi to communicate with each other and information flowed accurately between the two systems. I was also able to manufacture our pieces and print all pour components required for blind users to play physical chess.

Currently, we are slightly behind on our schedule as our PCBs had to be re-fabricated and re-ordered. This delay could potentially affect us, however, I have been able to simulate the testing script to ensure that our current system works correctly, so that we would only have to establish communication between the physical board and the online platform.

Regarding testing and validation, I have been able to add error logs in my software scripts to ensure I can catch any error by monitoring the errors.log file. Since we do not have our hardware components yet, we decided to simulate inputs like it would be made by a user, to play a game of chess with an online player. We also have been measuring our latency goals as we develop, to ensure we stay within our target. We have been user-testing our pieces to ensure our blind users can recognize pieces correctly, and identify the coordinates with the braille notation.

For next week, I plan on finishing the fabrication of our PCB and having our PCB powered, and connected to our software system. I also plan to ensure we have a fully functional button system for starting a game and performing other functions required for the game of chess, and also make sure we have our speaker embedded in our board.

This week, I was able to finish up our software module, upload our code onto the RPi and enable communication between arduino and RPi. Apart from this, I was also able to write arduino code, to help facilitate some sensor measurements and voltage checks for our hardware, before we pass data over to out software component. Apart from this, I was also able to write testing scripts for some of our scripts to help ensure optimal performance.

At the current rate, we are slightly behind schedule, however, we have our physical product in manufacturing, which would put us back on track to complete our project well ahead of time.

By next week, we hope to have a functional gameplay on the software side, and a proof of concept with at least 3-4 rows working, with the ability to detect different pieces and types of actions.

This week, I was able to finish modeling all our pieces and print a couple out to test that their behavior with the magnet and sensor is as expected. I was also able to determine the magnetic strength required for each unique piece and have our order ready to be placed on Tuesday. I was also able to work on the Software side with Edison to help ensure our code functions as expected. I was able to make a script to validate a user’s move made on the board and pass the information along through various other checks and finally over to lichess.org. I was also able to work on our arduino code, to help read the output of the Hall Effect Sensor.

Currently, we have been able to stick to our schedule, by making progress over spring break, and are a little behind on manufacturing the board.

I hope to complete the manufacturing of the board by next week, and also upload our code into the RPi. We hope to have full connectivity barring our hardware. This will enable full gameplay from a software application.

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.