Posted on

Team Status Report for 4/8/2023

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?  

Since the PCB arrived this week and works as intended, the next significant risk would be not getting the proper data sent between the Node JS server and the WIFI Rev. This step is integral towards having a completely wireless experience when using our solution. As of now, the Node JS code is able to send data to the WIFI Rev, it’s just not the game data we want. We do want to move forward in order to get to the testing and validation stage of our project, so if we can’t get it to work by the end of the week, we will revert back to having a wired arduino to the laptop. The arduino is able to respond to Node JS data when it is connected to a specific port, as Bethel demonstrated in earlier status reports so we should have no problem if we switch to this.

 

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?  

Since we had an interim demo this week, we ordered ribbon cables and the remaining PCB parts. The PCBs were a component we added on later within our design process. Our current design of our motor systems benefit from having an efficient distribution of power to our motors, which makes for both a bettered immersive experience and more distinguishable motor propagations for the user

 

Additionally, we decided to laser cut our “pocket” squares in order to achieve a more uniform look and stay consistent with sizing. This saved us a considerable amount of time as well, since we no longer have to sit and manually cut 10+ squares. We used fabric that was free and available to us through IDEATE. 

 

Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred. 

We don’t have an updated schedule, but plan to start validation testing by 4/14. Given that the rest of the PCBs will not arrive by then, validation will take us up till the final demo.

Posted on

Sophia’s Status Report for 4/8/2021

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 was able to start assembling the PCBs and start testing them. The PCBs and parts arrived Wednesday, which wasn’t in time to use them for the interim demo, but I was able to start testing them afterwards. On Wednesday, I put together one motor system and verified that it worked as intended. With the PCB assembled, Amelia was then able to size and laser cut the final motor system holders out of the final rubber material. After putting together the rest of the 5 PCBs I had on hand, I mounted one PCB to the motor system. Along with the laser cut fabric pockets, we now have our final vest assembly components. 

To move forward with the final vest assembly, I am also in charge of reversing the zipper on the best as we turned the vest inside out for our project. I was able to test removing and sewing the vest on the demo vest.

Figure 1: Soldered PCBs

Figure 2: The final motor system assembly

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

I would like to be further ahead on testing in order to receive more user feedback, but I am currently on schedule to finish my project. 

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

I hope that the rest of the PCBs will come in late next week. For early in the week, I will work on vest assembly and hope to reverse the zipper on the final vest, install the fabric pockets for the motor systems, and begin the final wiring if the rainbow ribbon cable comes in time. 

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?

For validation, I plan to check the technical side of the motors as well as collect some user data for the sensations of the motors. For the technical checks, I need to determine how quickly different responses will take to run and how to make them differentiable. This ties into the use case requirements of allowing for 10+ responses per minute and providing unique feedback patterns. Currently, I need to do a bit more work before I collect user input. I will position the motor system pockets and then ask for user feedback on the motor sensations. With only five PCBs currently, I will most likely have to rotate the motors test test the sensations for different parts of the torso.

Posted on

Bethel’s Status Report for 4/1/2023

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 actually concentrated on helping Amelia attach the motors to their prototype mounting plate when it came to constructing our motor systems as well as aiding Sophia in wiring up our six demo subsystems to the Haptic suit. 

My planned deliverable for this week involved me testing the Node JS server on the Arduino WIFI Rev while it is wireless. I am still in the process of accomplishing this with Amelia’s assistance as our Arduino code integration is proving to take a little longer than we had initially anticipated.

 

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 little behind from what I had anticipated I would have done by this week, as integration is taking longer than expected. I still have to integrate my software components with the hardware components that my teammates have built in order to have a working prototype either by the time we have our interim demo or sometime after. I will also still be focusing on how to use Puppeteer to acquire data from all the remaining game actions for this upcoming week. 

 

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

This week I plan to incorporate a web scraper library known as Puppeteer in my existing software to aid in tracking the game actions of the remaining three events, namely small hit, large hit and low health. Puppeteer will help me analyze different enemy actions in order to accurately transfer data relevant to the game action taking place. For instance, we would not want a low health event to be flagged every time the life bar decreases, instead we would like this event to be activated when the bar decreases to 25% of its original length. 

Moreover, I plan to continue testing my software on the Arduino WIFI Rev after establishing a wireless connection.

 

Posted on

Amelia’s Status Report 4/1

Updates for the week

This week, I focused on perfecting the forceful jump and low health light algorithm, the code for this can be found on our Github. A video of it can be seen here.

I also worked on ensuring that the lights had their own power supply since each LED draws a significant amount of current (20mA), and there was a common ground between them. My schematic for this can be seen here. I used a 6V power supply and used multimeter to measure the output voltage after this connection, which was ~5.12V. The rating for the lights is max 5V so  for the final, I will use buck converter in order to get exactly 5V from 9V.

I also tested that the lights are able to be controlled wirelessly, which can be seen here.

I then laser cut 5 sets motor mounting plates out of cardboard since it is easy to prototype and we do not have the PCBs yet in order to use the rubber material I demonstrated last week. These plates will be only be used for prototyping and for the demo on Wednesday.

Lastly, I worked with my team to mount + wire all the motors to their mounting plate in order to fit them onto the vest properly.

Progress On Schedule

So far I’m on schedule, it became clear that there needs to be a lot of wiring management and tiny fixes for our final design. For instance, we only noticed today while integrating the motors to the mounting plate that I need to fix the CAD model for the motor mount slightly, they should be rotated 90 degrees so that the wires don’t break off as easily. I also need to continue working on integrating the wireless code with Bethel.

Deliverables for next week

  • I need to laser cut a box out of 3mm acrylic to hold the two battery supply systems
  • laser cut another box for the Arduino itself so that the wires connected to the Arduino pins don’t come lose and detach.
  • Continue working on getting the JSON data from bethel and parsing it so that the vest works wirelessly with the game data.

 

 

Posted on

Team Status Report for 4/1/2023

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?  

Keeping an organized wiring system is one of the most significant risks going forward. For our demo, we have 22 gauge wires from the Arduino to each motor. This takes up a lot of space and for the 6 motor systems we have, the cable management is getting pretty messy. We currently have 5 colored wires for the 6 systems, but when we reach 18 motor systems we’re going to need a better system. For the demo, we’ve made a wiring diagram to reference that can be found here. Moving forward, to manage these risks for the final, we plan on using ribbon cables and crimp pin connections. With ribbon cables, we can have one bus of cables which are flat and organized. When the cable reaches a motor system, it will branch out to connect to the system. 

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?  

The orientation of the motors within their casing needs to be turned 90 degrees to the left (clockwise) in order to minimize the risk of breakage.

For the interim demo, we are changing how we implement the motor holders, power system for the lights, and motor system driving device. For the motor holdings, we are using cardboard instead of the rubber we plan to use for the final. This is to save money in our prototype system. We are using a 6V battery supply made up of 4 AA batteries instead of the 9V battery with a buck converter we plan to use in the final. This is because we are currently waiting for the buck converter to come in. Lastly, we are using the Arduino to power the motor systems instead of the servo driver device. This is for several reasons. The servo driver device does not provide enough power to drive the motor systems until we receive our PCB boards. We want to deliver a product that can provide the sensations we want for the final project so we are instead wiring the motor systems directly to the Arduino board. The board is limited to 6 PWM outputs so this solution will not work for the final. 

Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred. 

Individual tasks of each member will be updated to be taking place simultaneously with our integration of the software and hardware components. 

With regards to the software side of things, we are still looking to track the low health, small hit and large hit game events. Moreover, we look to incorporate our PCB to our original design the moment it arrives. 

This is also the place to put some photos of your progress or to brag about a component you got working.

 

Cascading lights

 

Progress with wiring up our motor systems

Posted on

Sophia’s Status Report for 4/1/2023

Accomplishments

I started turning my motor system functions into a library we could easily import and use. I also worked on vest assembly. I sewed some demo pockets which will hold the vibration motor systems. This required to to relearn how to sew after maybe 5 years on not using a sewing machine. I also helped Bethel with wiring up our six demo subsystems, as well as editing my current Arduino code to use the Arduino instead of the servo driver.
Figure 1: cut-out pockets for the vest
Figure 2: sewed pockets
Figure 3: mess of wires for the six motor subsystem

Schedule Update

I believe we are on schedule. We just have to you do user testing as well as making ours subsystems more robust.

Deliverables

I plan to help integrate the final parts of our project for the interim demo. I also plan to wire up the PCPs, which should come in early to mid next week.