This week, I primarily worked on getting Flutter set up and learning Dart, the programming language required for Flutter, while also working on the design presentation slides. I also worked with my teammates to draw out the diagrams for the hardware components. Sydney and I have also begun thinking about how we will be implementing the back orientation and curvature algorithms.
Currently, the plan is to potentially use pre-existing Arduino Quartenion libraries that work with gyroscopes, accelerometers, and compasses (the sensors we will have in our device). With Quaternion, we can determine sensor orientation and potentially detect back curvature by checking that all sensors are oriented in a straight line. For the back orientation, I am thinking we can use physics to determine sensor positioning and apply this data to see if sensors are located at a consistent distance apart throughout the movement.
I am currently behind schedule for my feedback page on the app because I did not account for the Flutter learning phase when creating the schedule. This should not affect the final date we finish our project because the plan is to finish the app by the time we finish building our devices, and based on the newly updated schedule, there are still several weeks left. By next week, I hope to figure out which specific Arduino libraries we will be using to read the data from our sensors. In addition, I hope to have worked on part of the Feedback page of our app.
The main courses that helped me incorporate design principles into this project were 18-349, 17-214, and 17-781. 18-349 allowed me to help Sydney with the hardware design process, while 17-214 helped me create and refine the object models I drew last week. Using the user design principles I learned from 17-781, I was able to design a user interface that users will hopefully find to be simple to use.