This week I missed a couple of sessions due to illness and therefore some progress was made but not significant enough to fulfill the schedule I had planned for this past week.
Regardless, I decided to perform some tests directly interfacing the NodeMcu with the IR sensor utilizing the simple Arduino script mentioned in last week’s report to perform simple analog reads and observe the voltage displayed in the serial monitor of the Arduino IDE. After interfacing them together, I noticed my measurements were quite inaccurate and inconclusive. After a while, I realized that the problem was the sensor since it was not properly communicating with the NodeMcu. I discovered this after I turned off the power source to the sensor and the readings were still confusing and exactly the same as when the sensor was powered on. I tinkered with the Arduino script and revised my connections yet the results remained the same.
In light of this, I replicated the analog setup detailed in the status report for 3/18 to see if analog measurements were recorded as expected and observed during those past trials. However, no readings were obtained and no voltage drop was observed across the LED (it also did not turn on). As a result, I need to review my wiring to see if that’s the problem or try out a different sensor since the one I was using might be non-functional (which is what I’m inclined to believe).
Thus, the plan for the weekend and the beginning of the week is to get a fresh analog setup with new components up and running and then set the connections with the NodeMcu in order to properly test the Arduino script. The goal is to have this subsystem running by the interim demo and and then merge my sensor script with the other communication script that handles the data transmission portion of the overall system.