Category: Xuan’s Status Reports

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).

We started working on the final deadlines such as the poster. I also am in the middle of repairing and strengthening the glove since the wire of the middle finger’s flex sensor apparently broke off. I’m also assisting Gram and David in their testing and calibration of the glove so that it is as accurate as possible.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?

We should be on track as we’re continuing our testing phase.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This week, I hope to finish all the testing as well as the final deadlines

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).

I didn’t anticipate having to resolder most of the flex sensors because it was too short. I initially soldered so the sensors would fit exactly on each finger of the glove, but it turns out that extra room was needed. I also switched from using a hard wire to a more flexible one. These were setbacks that occurred but fortunately were resolved in time. I was supposed to work on the battery circuit this week but this took a large amount of time.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?

Progress is slightly behind schedule due to this setback, but we should be on track as we’re continuing our testing phase.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This week, I finish integrating the battery into the glove and also plan to continue integration and run the tests that require an assembled glove.

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).

I finished soldering the glove, and Gram will help me in sewing the glove since I, unfortunately, have no sewing experience. I also ran some tests outlined below. I cleaned up the circuit so that it’s actually neat when used.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?

Progress is on schedule.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This week, I plan to continue integration and run the tests that require an assembled glove. I also will begin integrating the battery into the glove.

Now that you are entering into the verification and validation phase of your project, provide a comprehensive update on what tests you have you run or are planning to run. In particular, how will you analyze the anticipated measured results to verify your contribution to the project meets the engineering design requirements or the use case requirements?

The tests I have run include network latency tests with the MQTT, the range test, and making sure the flex sensors values are actually being read. I was able to verify that the connection to the Raspberry Pi hotspot was sufficiently quick, as packets were received properly every 10ms. Moving the Arduino 50 meters away from the Pi also didn’t affect the latency that much which passed the other test. Tests I will run include the battery test and the oscilloscope test mentioned in our design requirements. I will also assist my other group members in the accuracy tests since we will have the glove ready.

I will analyze my measured results by directly comparing them against the initial test goal metrics that we outlined in our design presentation and paper. For example, I’ll make sure that the battery test lasts at least one hour as stated in our requirements. This way, I’ll be sure that my contribution meets the design requirements.

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).

For this week, I mostly focused on soldering the circuit; I’m almost finished with soldering the circuit (will finish tomorrow). I also made a couple of minor optimization changes to the Arduino code. Specifically, the Arduino ADC reads from an integer 0-1024 range, however, the voltage that I ended up getting varied between 1-2.1 V, so I had to do some fine-tuning.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?

Progress is on schedule.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This week, I plan to begin assembling the actual glove with the soldered circuit and start integration with the other components.

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).

I finished assembling the breadboard circuit and testing it to see if it actually worked. The way how Arduino detects the inputs is via a voltage divider circuit, so when the flex sensor was being bent, there would be a different voltage drop. I had to test the other resistor I was using to ensure that the change in the ADC reading from the Arduino had sufficient range; if the other resistor was too small or large, there wouldn’t really be a noticeable change in resistance. I ended up asking for permission from a 220 TA to use the resistors they had in their lab as I asked Professor Tamal if there were available resistors around.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?

Progress is on schedule.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This week, I plan to begin soldering the sensors.

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).

I finished the MQTT portion for the code of the microcontroller. There was a decision made to hold 10 data packets on the glove side before transmission in order to reduce network traffic, as the minimum time interval in reading the IMU data is around 10ms. This might change with further testing though. I also started with the desktop application that we’re using for the configuration and calibration, which would be written using the Qt library.

Currently, it has the option to switch between left and right-hand mode, but the calibration process isn’t written yet as I think the compute module would need to be done before that. I’m also finishing up breadboarding the glove circuit.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?

I think we’re on track.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

I hope to further test using the breadboard circuit and integrate it with the MQTT portion of the compute module to see if there is a need to further optimize the network latency.

As you’ve now established a set of sub-systems necessary to implement your project, what new tools have your team determined will be necessary for you to learn to be able to accomplish these tasks?

I’m not necessarily learning anything new, but probably would need to sharpen up my soldering skills. I also probably would need to sharpen my skills in Qt.

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).

A large portion of the week was spent working on the design report. It actually was easier than I initially expected due to the preparation we did from the entire design iteration process, as we had most of our ideas down when we did the slides.

I also started writing the system code for the microcontroller of the glove module. Specifically, I started writing code that would read sensor data from the various pins and started implementing an MQTT client that would pack and transmit this packet over a network.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?

I think we’re on track as we adjusted our schedule last week.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

I hope to finish the main code of this glove microcontroller and assemble a basic breadboard representation of the glove module. This is to ensure everything will be working before soldering any component onto the glove.

As you’ve now established a set of sub-systems necessary to implement your project, what new tools have your team determined will be necessary for you to learn to be able to accomplish these tasks?

I’m not necessarily learning anything new, but probably would need to sharpen up my soldering skills.

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).

We prepared the slides for the design presentation. We also started with the design report, although we didn’t make significant progress yet because the feedback came yesterday.

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 slightly behind because our Gantt chart didn’t take into account the significance of the design review process and spring break. We updated the Gantt chart in response. Also, one of our parts was missing because the wrong part was shipped, so we put in a request for that. I think the original chart also had extra time that could be shortened, so we edited that part too.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

I hope to finish the design report and start assembling the hardware glove module when the missing part arrives.

This week, we spent time refining our design. One thing that came up was the actual gestures that we were going to use. We translated our three general gestures, zoom with a pinching gesture, pan with a swiping gesture, and rotate with a rotating gesture, into specific gestures described in three aspects: flex sensor output resistance, accelerometer measurement, and gyroscope measurement. For example, this is our more detailed description of a zoom-in gesture:

Pan

• Grab: partially closed hand as if you’re grabbing an object (half curl)
• Pan: Move your hand while keeping the same finger positions

Flex: all constant mid

Acc: changing x

Gyro: Constant

 

We also realized that our zoom-in gestures and zoom-out gestures have to be different because we don’t want the gesture to be reversible. We wouldn’t want the user to zoom in, then when they let go of the gesture, the detection might trigger a reverse if we’re using the same gesture. Along with a more detailed design, we also worked on our design presentation.

I think our progress is still on schedule because we have already received our Pi, and the original deadline this week was to put in the bill of materials. Next week, we hope to receive our other materials and start building the glove, along with initially writing up the gesture detection mechanism.

Relevant ECE Courses: 18-290, 18-220, 18-349

Gestures

I spent the beginning of the week finishing the proposal slides, and practicing and delivering the presentation. We first revised our initial proposal submission based on the comments provided by the Professor and proceeded to draft the slides. To be honest, I was a little nervous about finding out that I had to go first on the same day the order was revealed, but I think I  was able to present just fine.

In our original timeline, we were supposed to discuss and order the materials by next week. However, we decided that we had a lot of time left, so we were able to finalize our Bill of Materials this week. In particular, we swapped out our proposed solution for a Jetson in favor of a Raspberry Pi 4 because of the Jetson’s incompatibilities with HID and the need for an extra Wi-Fi module. Gram was able to send in the order, so hopefully, we would able to start working on the actual project next week.