This week, in addition to the ethics assignment and lecture, I focused on setting up the hardware circuit and helping debug the camera set up. For the hardware circuit, I initially attempted setting up the circuit according to my simulated MVP design. However, I soon found that some of the parts were not exactly the same as the ones in the simulation, and therefore could not be connected the same way or use the same libraries. A big example of this was the neopixel strip, which was actually the “Dotstar” version that used SPI, therefore needing a separate clock and data line. I therefore had to move the neopixel strip pins to use 11 and 13, as those were the pins on the Arduino Uno that had the MSIO and CLK SPI signals. Besides this, the speaker and the servos could be connected as per simulation. After some debugging, I was able to successfully connect and operate the neopixel strip, servos, and speaker. After this, I added code to have the Arduino accept and use serial input, connected the Aduino with a usb to my computer, and ran a python script to see if the Arduino would accept and correctly control the components based on the given input, which after some debugging, worked as well. The next step in this process will be running the input script on the Jetson itself to make sure the connection between it and the Arduino works the same way.
After setting up the hardware subsystem, I helped Ting and Aichen debug the CSI camera connection. Although the device could recognize that a camera was connected, despite trying to install and use multiple streaming commands, none of them seemed to work. The errors produced by these commands seemed to indicate that something might be wrong with the camera+Jetson connection itself, so we will try using the camera on the nano to see if there is an issue with the camera or the Jetson port, and temporarily use a USB camera in case the CSI one does not end up working.
I also worked on further fine tuning our mechanical design and specified measurements for the different parts of the frame and door.
Schedule wise, we have now caught up in terms of hardware. We are behind on the mechanical side due to the constant revision of the plan and not having all the parts we need for the new design. We are also a little behind on the software side due to unexpected issues regarding the camera. Therefore, our plan is to focus our time fixing and fine tuning the software and the camera+Jetson subsystem so that we have that working with the hardware in time for the interim demo, and then focus more time on the mechanical portion once those parts arrive.
This next week, I plan on testing the Jetson+Arduino integration and helping out with the camera/software debugging so that we get back on track and have everything ready for the demo the following week.