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Nish’s Status Report 2/25

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files orphotos 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 worked for a few hours on making the slides for the presentation. I think spent another few hours practicing and delivering the presentation. Following that, I’ve been working on putting together the materials we need to order, such as sourcing the wrist strap and bluetooth module. We are also meeting to order the PCB this week, so it will arrive during spring break.

 

I made the block diagrams and testing plans, as well as further extensions.

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 are slightly behind, but once we can order the PCB and parts I think we will be on track, and we can start working on setting up the code base.

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

 

I want to create a dummy app that creates a Kivy Interface from an Xcode wrapper. Hopefully, I will also be implementing camera and bluetooth access in the app, to make sure we can connect to the iPhone infrastructure.

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Caroline’s Status Report for 2/25/2023

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files orphotos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

In the past week, I worked with the rest of my group to finalize our design presentation. In addition to this, I ordered a pair of pressure sensors to test on: 

We chose these sensors because they are lightweight and aren’t bulky. We hope that they will not interfere with the user’s finger movements and will not seem noticeable. We hope to test for its reactiveness and functionality to see if they will be the best sensors to use. Although these pressure sensors might not be the exact model of sensors we are going to use for our final product, we are using these to test our components and CV.  This allows for modularity in our system, so if one sensor breaks, it is easy to replace, without having to disrupt the whole system. I will design our PCB around this so it is convenient to replace.

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

Currently, I believe that our progress is on schedule. We aimed to have all of our parts ordered by this weekend and we are finalizing and ordering any remaining parts by tomorrow.

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

In the next week, I hope to create the breadboard for our PCB and order the PCB before spring break starts. This would allow us to not waste time waiting for the PCB to arrive.

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Team Status Report for 2/25/2023

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?

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 last sunday, we developed the block diagram, design requirements, and system specification for our new project for the design review presentation. Some of the changes we made are stated in the slides:

We were also considering making a change from the STM32 to another micro-controller. Details on this will be discussed today.

Please discuss teaming with your team.. and, please enumerate how you have adjusted your team work assignments to fill in gaps related to either new design challenges or team shortfalls (e.g. a team member missing a deadline).

Since we changed our entire project last week, we made significant changes to our team work assignments to account for these changes:

Nish: Pressure Thresholding, Xcode + Kivy Interface

Caroline: PCB and Glove Design

Lee: CV processing

Testing and verification remained the same

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Lee’s Status Report for 2/25/2023

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 past week, I worked with my group to refine our design review presentation slides. Some of the changes we made to my initial slides were about the testing and verification section. I initially had descriptions of the unit tests we would conduct and any additional information that would need to be stated would be conveyed verbally (I did this since we were given the suggestion last time to have less text). After discussion with my group, we opted to follow the format provided in the design review template which asked us to describe the inputs and outputs of our test and how it was relevant to the quantitative design requirements. Since this was quantitative it stood to reason that so should these test cases.

Additionally, during the the week I contributed to submit design review peer forms during scheduled class times.

Lastly, I researched what part to order for the phone mount that would attach to the laptop. I had to make sure the phone mount wouldn’t be magnetic since I didn’t like the idea of attaching a phone mount permanently to the laptop via an adhesive strip on both devices. I opted to go for a clamp option since it would leave no trace and it wouldn’t be attached when our product was not in use. Furthermore, I went to find a design on Amazon that had a 180 degree rotation so that the phone could swivel and point at a 45 degree downward towards the piano layout.

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

Our project is on schedule. We recently adjusted it to account for the change in project, but since by the end of this week we have mainly figured out which exact components we want to order most of what it left is then continuing on to work on our individual parts. For me, that is working on the CV component and I have already done so preliminary research into the functionality and example code for OpenCV so I can familiarize myself with it’s syntax. I took Computer Vision 16-385 and even though we did not use OpenCV, the fundamentals of what the built-in functions do were certainly taught and some of which we even implemented on our own.

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

By the end of the next week, I hope to have OpenCV package installed on my laptop and have done additional research on the application towards a piano layout. Also looking to research for some sort of preliminary basic code for objection detection for finger-tips.

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Nish’s Status Report for 2/18

 

  1. 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, we completely changed our project. Caroline and I spent a few hours trying to figure out how to pivot from our MyTagMyBag idea into something else that is centered our identification, or even in IoT. We went through our old list of ideas and came across our Virtual Piano idea, so we got to work on flushing that out. After talking through initial designs with a few TAs, I created a new abstract for our new idea. I spent a lot of time figuring the different use cases and parts that we would need, such as which finger sensors, and how our glove should look. I also met with Professor Sullivan to discuss how to scope our idea to something that is feasible.  I am also writing the presentation for next week.

 

2. 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 definitely behind as we changed our project this week. However, we did work on creating a new abstract in order to catch up, and also met with Professor Sullivan and a few TAs in order to more thoroughly think through our project. We will have to catch up by tomorrow night anyways in order to do our Design Overview, and I think that we have gotten to a good place besides actually ordering our parts and working on our code.

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

Once we finish the Design Overview (we are currently working on putting together) Presentation, we will work on the Report and try to order our parts. While we wait for the PCB, we will probably begin working on the interface and CV portion of the project, as the pressure sensors can be added in later. Next week, I will get done the presentation and I also hope to finish designing the glove with the small PCB and get that ordered.

 

4. Please list the particular ECE courses (if any) that covered the engineering science and mathematics principles your team used to develop your design ? If there are no courses please tells us how you learned those principles over the last week ?

16-370, Computer Vision

18-349, Intro to Embedded Systems

18-449, Distributed Embedded Systems

 

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Team Status Report for 2/18/2023

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?

The most significant risk that we are facing right now is being behind because we just changed our whole capstone project idea last week. We received lots of feedback from our proposal presentation, and we believed that it would be best if we changed our idea. Our previous idea contained a lot of moving parts that didn’t necessarily fit together, but we tried to force them together. In addition, we decided to switch because, as a whole, we are more passionate and interested in our new project idea. Lastly, the original idea had some fundamental issues regarding practically and cost that made it seem as a whole more infeasible.

Because this is a huge setback, we are working overtime in order to not fall too far behind. We started to order parts already and are in the process of finalizing our design review presentation.

Since we are changing our project so late in the semester, we have a contingency plan that involves creating a simple MVP project first, and then building on it when we have time. This allows us to create a product that meets our expectations while not overcomplicating it and bringing in too many factors. We would love for our project to be as complex as possible, but with the given time, we realize that it may not be feasible to add every single component that we want.

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?

Because we completely changed our project idea, we have created a new requirements for our the new design of our system. The first set of requirements is that we want our product to be light and portable (weight and size) while still retaining a level of robustness. These changes are necessary so the user can have the accessibility and agency to conduct music arrangement and composition anywhere they are. Additional requirements were regarding number of chords, volumes, and octaves the user could play on this piano. This was also necessary since the user needs to feel that this product can be worth-while to use rather than the effort used to find a real piano. These requirements provides the fundamental needs of the arranger and composer so that our product can stand on its own uniqueness (portable) and be differentiated from most pianos. Lastly, the requirements that target accuracy is beyond paramount for the user since they desire a reliable and accurate product for their needs. If our note and playback is inaccurate, then it won’t be sufficient for the user to enjoy using this over other pianos.

The costs that these changes incur take up our own time to edit and develop these changes to the design.  Moving forward, additional costs to our time can be mitigated by finalizing our design after the design review this next week so there won’t be any confusion and fewer errors.

Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.

Here is a link to our new GANTT chart: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Cjl4wdKSUFSZtF_5Mw1JuqtcA23wlrnsTV8MYDUDK88/edit?usp=sharing

Please enumerate one or more principles of engineering, science and mathematics that your team used to develop the design solution for your project.

We used the reliability principle of engineering to design how each of the components in our design, when integrated, would remain functional while also providing the user a strong sense of our product’s robustness and accessibility. We designed our product to be simple so that it would remain lightweight and portable for the user including dependencies on everyday devices (phones and laptops) so the user would not have to bring additional equipment with them to enjoy a level of satisfaction that comes with playing the piano anywhere they go.

 

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Lee’s Status Report for 2/18/2023

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).

Over the past week, I worked with my group and speaking with Tamal and Professor Sullivan regarding our project change to our new idea of our AR piano. I expressed many concerns and thoughts about the new project idea which gave us the necessary ability to address many of the caveats that came along with this change. Lastly, I helped take the information discussed in a google doc which was divided up into sections in the abstract to creating a rough draft of the slideshow presentation for the design review.  Here are some example slides below of my work:

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

Due to changing our project idea, our progress is a bit behind. We worked this week to ensure that our design idea was fleshed out and thorough to get back to the same pace as the design from our original idea. Because our idea is more simple and has less complexity, it also means there will be less confusion amongst group members as well as a more cohesive design review presentation.

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

For the next week, I plan on working on the peer review forms for the presentations next week. I am also eager to await for the feedback on our design review presentation so we can also make the necessary changes to our project too before we dig ourselves a hole we cannot get out of. In the meantime, I also plan on working on my side of the Gantt scheduling for my part of the project.

Please list the particular ECE courses (if any) that covered the engineering science and mathematics principles your team used to develop your design ? If there are no courses please tells us how you learned those principles over the last week ?

For our project, the courses 16-385 (Computer vision), 18-220 (Circuits), 18-349 (Embedded Systems) covered the main science and mathematical concepts and principles for our design.

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Caroline’s Status Report for 12/18/2023

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files orphotos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

In the past week, we decided to change our project idea, so I helped research more different types of distance sensors that could fit onto people’s fingers. Due to the fact that we changed our project idea, I created a new GANTT chart to accurately reflect our new project. I also ordered some pressor sensors that we want to use so that we could be on track next week. In addition, I helped create slides for the design review next week.

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

I believe that we are currently a bit behind schedule because, in our new GANTT chart, we aimed to have finished our breadboarding by this week, but we have not finished ordering or have not received the necessary parts that we need for our project. In order to combat this, we will be starting on other tasks simultaneously while we wait for our parts to arrive.

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

In the next week, we hope to have a preliminary demonstration of how our pressure sensors can work and how we can use the CV to track fingers.

Please list the particular ECE courses (if any) that covered the engineering science and mathematics principles your team used to develop your design? If there are no courses please tell us how you learned those principles over the last week?

I will be using the information and content that I learned from 18220, 18021, and 18290 for our project.

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Nish’s Status Report Feb 11

Originally located: http://course.ece.cmu.edu/~ece500/projects/s23-teamb6/weekly-status-reports/nish-weekly-status-report-for-february-11th/

In the past week, we worked mainly on our proposal presentation. I worked on our “Thievery Flow” as well as flushing out the different components in our solution to try and make it more cohesive.  I identified specific versions of products we could use, such as the STM32 + RAK4600 Bluetooth that would complement each other, and researched the other components we were considering working with. We worked as a team to edit all the slides together.

  

I think we are a little behind on our design. Though we tried to edit our use case requirements, I think we still have written our requirements based on our selected implementation, leading to aspects of our design that may seem unnecessary, such as having Bluetooth. To make sure our design review goes smoothly, I would like to go back and refine our requirements, or perhaps pick another use case where we can implement a similar type of sensing mechanism as people are walking through a certain space, allowing for identification of who is passing through. I think we have been trying to overcomplicate a simple solution with a lot of “nice-to-haves” without having a solid foundation.;

We plan to have a meeting to focus on our project, whether that be through a different use case or refining our current one and redoing the requirements. I plan to bring a few ideas for different use cases to this meeting.

Next week, I want to have a complete parts list and have ordered the different components we need. We might need some more time on the PCB side because once we decide on the components, we still need to put the actual PCB together. I want us as a team to revisit each component we were thinking about and make sure having it serves a requirement in our use case rather than something that would be making our project more complex for the sake of it. Once we have our components ready, we can also set up our repo with the starter code (especially for something like the STM32, if we choose to continue using it).

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Caroline’s Status Report for 2/11/2023

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).

In the past week, I worked with my other team members to produce our Proposal Presentation Slideshow. This involved researching and adding more information regarding our scanners, batteries, and PCB. From this research, we determined that we wanted our PCB to have an RFID module, Bluetooth module, accelerometer, and break beam sensor. I also created a GANTT chart so that we can keep each other accountable for our tasks and so we could have an even labor distribution. In addition, I presented our presentation to my fellow peers and we received lots of feedback on our proposal.

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

I believe that we are currently a bit behind schedule because, in our GANTT chart, we aimed to have all of our research and ordering done this week, but we have not ordered any parts that we need for our project. In order to combat this, we will be ordering our parts and I will start on the PCB design as soon as possible.

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

In the next week, I hope to finalize our project idea and order the necessary parts for our project. From the feedback that we received, we realized that we might need to pivot our idea slightly in order to create the best product that we had in mind. In addition, because it will take time to design and order our custom PCB, I will try to start designing our breadboard so that our next steps aren’t postponed because of this.