Author: jhchen2

Personal Progress

This week the majority of our hardware purchases arrived and I’ve began work on assembling our hardware system. I finished building our sunlight detection circuit (figure 1). As shown in the Arduino code and serial monitor results, the circuit can determine the brightness shining on the photoresistor.

Figure 1 (above) : Light detection circuit

 

Figure 2: Light detection code

Figure 3: Analog Pin result under Room light, Flash Light, and Low light respectively

I’ve also began working on stepper motor control system as shown below.

I had to move the tasks in my schedule around because we did not receive the D455 Depth Camera this week and thus moved up the task of setting up the motorized blinds and other sensor system.

Plans for Next Week

I plan to test the light detection circuit under actual sunlight so I can find the brightness threshold for actual sunlight. I also hope to get the motor control fully completed.

Personal Progress

Our original plan of utilizing the RealSense Depth Camera L515 that the school already had fell through because after some testing, we found out the L515 Camera’s depth perception range gets severely hindered by sunlight (down to max depth range of 1.5m away). This lead me to do research for new hardware that fits our need. We settled with the RealSense Depth Camera D455 because it has a 6m range in sunlight and from a vender that we know we can trust and has good documentations. However the D455 is pretty pricey so we double checked our hardware needed to build our motorized blind to make sure it all fits within budget. I was able to get it down to all fit within the budget with $100 still available as leeway.

We also collected data to test our Light Area of Effect (LAoE) algorithm on Wednesday.  The predicted light area from our LAoE is about 10% off from the actual area the sunlight affected. This is expected since our LAoE algorithm simplifies light to be a particle and thus move in a straight line when in reality light is both a particle and wave and thus would bend outwards a little.

While I am waiting for the hardware purchase to be approved and to arrive, I helped with the design presentation and design report.

We are ahead of schedule because we originally schedule work to began after design presentation so all the work we are doing now were work planned for the coming week.

Classes knowledge utilized

For this weeks work, I’ve utilized knowledge from 18220 to understand the circuit diagram of other arduino controlled motorized blinds.

Plans for Next Week

If we were able to obtain the new RealSense Depth Camera D455 and the hardware for the blinds within the next week, I would be working on setting it up. During the downtimes, I would continue assisting Elizabeth and Dianne with their work.

Personal Progress

I did research on the exact LiDAR Camera we should use with the assistance of Elizabeth and settled with the Intel RealSense Cameras. I also did research on Arduino-controlled motorized blinds that met our requirement and found a guide on one. We noticed that the ECE inventory already has an RealSense Camera and Raspberry Pi 4 so we put in the request for these hardware. As for the hardware for the motorized blinds, we are waiting for our design meeting on Monday before finalizing the purchase since this component of the project is not a prerequisite for any other work other than integration.

Since we don’t have the hardware on hand right now, I assisted Dianne in creating the Light Area of Effect (LAoE) Algorithm. During the development process, we were not sure how the azimuth (the angle from the north pole) affects how far the light projects away from the window wall. We performed an experiment to test this and found that the azimuth should not affect the projection distance from the wall. The photos to the experiment is in the team status report.

 (My proposed LAoE Algorithm)

I am currently not behind on schedule since we originally thought that the purchase of hardware would take place after the design presentation.

Plans for Next Week

If we were able to obtain the RealSense Cameras and Raspberry Pi 4 within the next week, I would be working on setting it up and collecting some camera feeds for Dianne and Elizabeth to use as sample during software development. If the professor and teaching assistant approves of our design, we can then finalize our hardware purchases and help Elizabeth and Dianne with algorithms/software development in the down times. If the design is not approved then I will research on other hardware alternatives.