Final Report
Final Poster
Saniya’s Status Report for April 29
What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).
This week I met with Madi and Shize to work through putting our parts together. I worked with the Feather code that Shize put together and added various movement and animation functions. I have also been researching and running tests for using UART with iOS Core Bluetooth in order to help Madi with the app. I worked up a new circuit design for adding an external switch and battery to the earring and received preliminary CAD designs from Madi, which I hope to elaborate on soon.
Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?
My progress is on schedule.
What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?
I hope to finish working with Madi to integrate the BLE functionality with the UI of the app she has already built and complete the design report.
Team Status Report for April 8
What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project? How are these risks being managed? What contingency plans are ready?
Our key concern for our project continues to be integrating the Bluetooth modules for the software and hardware portions of our project. As we are running behind schedule according to our Gantt Chart, we have been left with less time than previously planned for combing our work and testing the final product.
Were any changes made to the existing design of the system (requirements, block diagram, system spec, etc)? Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward? Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.
Whilst we have not made any major changes to our overall design, we have decided to prioritise working on our MVP LED Matrix Device. Previously we were working on both the LED Matrix and our stretch goal, the LCD Screen, in parallel, however as all of our group members have had a busy semester, we have collectively decided to focus on producing a single, functional final product.
Please enumerate how you have adjusted your team work assignments to fill in gaps related to either new design challenges or team shortfalls.
Saniya’s Status Report for April 1
What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?
This week I built the circuit with our RGB matrix and tested it first using basic Arduino demos. I also worked through some Bluetooth examples for the STM32WB using Zephyr, which is the software that my 349 TA showed us. I also spent a good amount of time laying out the basic schematic for our PCB using the Nucleo board’s design for reference. However, since the Nucleo board has far more subsystems and functionality than we require, I have had a little difficulty in understanding which sections of the power management circuitry I need to integrate into my design, and which of the many STLINK programming options I need to add. I hope to clear these questions up in our meeting with Professor Nace on Wednesday.
Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?
We were a bit behind schedule due to issues working with the STM board, but this week Shize and I will meet with Professor Nace to finalize our PCB design and try to get some basic patterns working with STM control.
What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?
This week I will work with Shize to make sure the circuit works properly with the STM32 and finish out the PCB design.
Saniya’s Status Report for March 25
What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?
This past week I worked more on the PCB. Since we were hitting some roadblocks with being able to program the STM32WB, I did some research on my own and tried generating projects through ST softwares such as STM32CubeIDE and CubeMX. I was still having no luck with these, so I brought our board to my Embedded OH, where a TA was able to help me get the board working using the Zephyr development environment. We were also able to test sending a simple Bluetooth packet that was received over iOS and an existing STM app that lets you view wireless data transfers from ST devices. I spent a few hours running samples and will be bringing Shize up to speed on what I worked on with the TA.
Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?
We are a bit behind schedule due to the issues we were having with configuring the board, but now that those have been amended, I plan to spend time with Shize this week hashing out our hardware code. Using Zephyr seems to be far less complicated, so I don’t think it will take too long if we work together.
What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?
In the next week, I hope to have all the base code for the hardware finished and if that is done, then I can get the PCB design ready for fabrication.
Saniya’s Status Report for March 11
What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).
In the week preceding spring break, I spent some time working with my team on our Design Report. During break, I spent a significant amount of time working on the library for LED matrix. I attempted to integrate my work with the HAL library Shize compiled on our Github and was unsuccessful.
Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?
My progress is a bit behind schedule due to the inability to coordinate efficiently and work collaboratively over break on the code for the device. This coming week, I will spend time working with Shize in person to see if we can hopefully debug our issues, and if that fails, we will create an alternative plan to implement our device using Adafruit extension boards.
What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?
In the next week, I hope to debug the interface we’ve created with the STM HAL library and help Shize in completing the PCB design.
Team Status Report for Feb 25
What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project? How are these risks being managed? What contingency plans are ready?
The primary concern (which we mentioned in the previous report) is still the PCB design. To address this concern further, we have multiple people on the team now working with Fusion 360 to create schematics and board layouts, as well as writing preliminary circuit plans. Another concern is the BLE connection to the device: since our microcontrollers arrived at the beginning of the week, we were able to start working with them and familiarize ourselves with how the device I/O works with BLE. Due to this, the concern around connectivity is generally less but we will see how the iOS development end of the process will go.
Were any changes made to the existing design of the system (requirements, block diagram, system spec, etc)? Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward?
There are a few small changes made to the design of our system, mostly in the approach we were taking to the hardware design. Upon starting this project, we conceptualized our hardware design process in a way that would require a lot more time to create our own low-level functions to interact with the matrix, in the way we have learned to interact with peripherals in our classwork. However, this would be a lot more time-intensive than is necessary, and would make it more difficult for us to move much beyond our MVP. Going forward, we want to spend more hardware design time rese arching and utilizing the multitude of resources to interact with our parts and create a better device for the user. After understanding better how to the STM microelectronics libraries with the Adafruit libraries, we will create an updated block diagram.
Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.
Our initial Gantt chart had us starting hardware design for the LCD immediately after the LED matrix; we have modified that to ensure that we complete our MVP fully first, with working wireless communication and designs, before moving on to the more complicated LCD implementation.
Please enumerate how you have adjusted your team work assignments to fill in gaps related to either new design challenges or team shortfalls.
Our team work assignments have not changed drastically from the roles we initially defined. Due to midterms, we all had less time this week to work on our tasks, but have rearranged the approach to hardware designing by splitting up the process in a slightly different way. We initially were planning to collaboratively work through the design and coding, but have now split it so that Shize will focus on the base set up of STM32 and I will focus on the peripherals, currently interacting with the LED matrix. Going forward, we will continue to make adjustments to more effectively take on the design of our system.
Saniya’s Status Report for Feb 25
What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?
I spent time earlier in the week working on the design report with my team members and since our parts arrived, I started familiarizing myself with the DotStar Matrix interface. I first tested basic functionality with simple Arduino tutorial scripts and then began connecting the device to the STM32 with a breadboard to start testing basic I/O connection. Finally, I began practicing with PCB design to able to better work with Shize on developing our schematic in the coming weeks. I acquired Fusion 360 and created a few simple circuits from tutorials, schematic and board and ran the ERC/DRC checks successfully.
Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?
While I was able to get a solid start on writing the connection interface, I would have liked to get further with the matrix functions. I anticipated that I would have significantly less time this past week due to my exam/lab schedule in other courses, but I factored the time to catch up into the coming week and my break since I won’t be traveling.
What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?
In the next week, I hope to (1) complete the design report with my teammates and (2) have a more complete interface for the STM32 to control the DotStar matrix in some basic functions such as color-changes and simple shape designs via buttons or stdin commands.