Regarding current risks, none of us have used a Raspberry Pi, and that is a primary piece of hardware in our current implementation. If we move to a solution that implements a Raspberry Pi alongside an FPGA, this may mitigate risks due to the lack of familiarity as we will be using the Raspberry Pi only for communication between the FPGA and the web application. However, there would be new challenges with figuring out how to incorporate the FPGA, specifically the best way to transfer data in and out of it and how to implement a neural network within the FPGA to speed up ML identification.
Regarding changes to our design, we are looking into the use of an FPGA as our main piece of computational hardware paired with another piece of hardware (currently a Raspberry Pi) for communication with the web application. If a 2-piece solution is used it will be more expensive but will significantly increase the computational power, decreasing video buffers and lowering time to classification and notification. This is of particular interest to us because Rebecca has experience working with FPGAs so a solution using an FPGA would allow us to fully utilize these skills. If this is not feasible, either due to cost or implementation complexity, then we can move back to our original plan using only a Raspberry Pi. Although with regards to cost, it is our belief that were this product to actually be marketed, the FPGA would be replaced with a bulk-manufactured digital chip which should cut consumer costs substantially. The FPGA is simply a much more convenient and flexible way to prototype the initial design. We have also specified more parts of our block diagram for the frontend and backend of the web application, as seen in Brandon’s individual report for this week.
Regarding any schedule change, because our current tasks center around researching different implementations for our final design implementation, there are no major changes to our schedule.
Regarding ethics, our project primarily includes considerations for inclusivity and personal privacy. There is a huge variety of homes that have pets, so one of our priorities is trying to keep our product as inclusive as possible with regards to price and ease of use. And personal privacy is of course something that we’re concerned about preserving, as our project requires setting up a camera in one’s home, so we want to minimize the amount of personal information that our system could potentially make more vulnerable.