Category: Dianne’s Status Reports

Personal Progress

This week we worked on setting up the system for the demo (with the frame and the artificial lights) as well as adding some features for the user, such as stopping in the middle of a movement if a person leaves the LAOE and readjusting accordingly.

Next Steps

We will need to fine tune a bit more with the setup for the demo (the artificial lights), and focus on working on the final document, poster, and video.

Personal Progress

This week we worked on the final presentation as well as preparing for the final demo. We have planned out what we will be doing and working on the physical as well as technical setup, such as the frame and what the different light source location examples we will be showing will be.

We are currently on track.

Next Steps

Next week, we hope to finish implementing the things we need for our demo (physical setup, hardcoded sun location examples, etc) and prepare the final report and video and other materials.

Personal Progress

This week I worked on fine tuning the LAOE portion of the algorithm and creating more rigorous testing. This should help ensure that edge cases where a person is on or near the boundary of being in the LAOE will be treated as an “in LAOE” case to be safe, as well as adding a few more test cases. This will need to be tested on one of the sunny days coming up. The changes I made can be seen on our repository as usual: https://github.com/djge/18500_GroupC1

I also worked briefly with Elizabeth on setting up the RPi on Wednesday.

We are currently on track, and I hope to run some more integrated testing with a real person in sunlight to ensure that the adjustments I made will work in a real setting.

Comprehensive Testing Update

I have already run tests measuring the difference between data and measured projection points from the window onto the floor (this determines the “area of effect”). There are 7 total test cases (4 points for each), giving a total of 28 test cases. We may continue to measure data on sunny days for this, but our focus going forwards will be on integration testing with a real life scenario of a person in and out of the LAOE, as well as testing whether or not the change in blinds mitigates the effects of sunlight.

Next Steps

Next week, we hope to run more testing in real situation testing, as it should be sunny. We also hope to finish and set up a way to present the blinds so they are more visually appealing and come up with adjustments that will make it more user-friendly.

Personal Progress

This week I worked on both testing and integration with my teammates. Since Wednesday was a sunny day, we did some testing on the User Position Extraction algorithm. We were able to figure out some issues with it and some changes, such as adding the height of the stand of the LIDAR camera. We also did some testing with the LAOE algorithm. One was the projection coordinates function, where we map coordinates of the corners of the windows onto where the light is cast onto the floor. We kept having strange values for the y-value of the top left and top right coordinates, but we eventually realized that this was because there was the ledge of the roof outside and above the window that was blocking off the top portion of the window from direct light. After accounting for the length of this ledge, the algorithm works great with relatively low error (~4% error). We also manually tested the intersection algorithm, which uses both user position and projection coordinates. This also worked relatively well enough for our initial standards.

We are currently on track. We are working on getting a construct to attach the blinds, but all testing besides integration testing is done.

Next Steps

Next week, we hope to finished with the MVP and fine tune the accuracy of the algorithms.

Personal Progress

This week I worked on both testing and integration with my teammates.

With Elizabeth, we worked on the integration of the main file that would continuously be running face detection and doing calculations if a face is found. I also wrote a testing file that would make sure the projection coordinates are correct, as this is the most important part for accuracy reasons. There are a few issues right now (I might have gotten the axis or angle mixed up relative to North, as the sign of the x-value is flipped). The full scope of the work can be found in our repository: https://github.com/djge/18500_GroupC1.

Jeff and I discussed potential ways to integrate the motor system with the adjustment of the blinds, but have yet to integrate as we first need to calibrate the turning of the blinds with the blind size to figure out how we can get the blinds to go up or down a certain amount. We are currently on track.

Next Steps

Next week, we hope to have an integrated system, where we can start to debug as well as fine tune parts of the project that are not performing as well as they should be. Additionally, I will work on the issues with the algorithm and writes tests for the intersect function as well.

Personal Progress

This week I finished the LAOE implementation. Since I already finished the projection coordinates function, what I worked on implementing was the intersection between a user and the light area of effect and the necessary change to the blinds in the case that a user is in the LAOE. The full scope of the update can be seen in this commit: https://github.com/djge/18500_GroupC1/commit/69665b1dfaf08be004fe2e29e75437b43dc36aa9

I also wrote up some pseudocode for a main function that takes these inputs and sends them to the correct functions in the right steps to get the necessary change to the blinds.

Next Steps

Next week, I hope to get some working integration. I also want to set up test cases to fix the accuracy of the LAOE projected coordinates, but we will be focusing on integration first. This will be both software and hardware integration, such as testing the change in blinds with a command from a blinds change function.

Progress

This week, I worked primarily on the Design Report. I focused on sections in design relating to the LAOE algorithm, such as illustrating and describing how the algorithm works in implementation, trade studies with figuring out the AOE with hardware, and the tests we plan to conduct in regards to LAOE. I also worked on the use case requirements and the architecture and principles of operation sections.

Schedule

So far, I am on schedule. This week is part of the algorithm implementation, which was started last week and is mostly complete except for some parts of the intersection detection and blinds change calculation.

Next Steps

Going forwards, I will finish up the LAOE algorithm and start setting up test cases so we can make sure everything is working correctly and make the necessary adjustments as soon as possible.

Progress:

This past week, as a group we worked on specifying what we needed for our project as well as the Design Review. I worked on the full diagram depicting how the parts of the project fit together and how they are connected.

Individually, I got started with the code for the Light Area of Effect (LAOE) algorithm. I made a rough outline/layout of the different working functions that I would need to write, as well as implementing a few of them. I wrote out the algorithm for the projection of the light coming through the window onto the floor using the manual testing we had done last week. This is the code so far, but it will need to be changed after doing some testing with the data we have on hand:

Additionally, I wrote the start to some code for checking for the intersection between a point (person) and the volumetric prism where the light is cast into the room. All my changes were reflected here: https://github.com/djge/18500_GroupC1

Next Steps

So far, I am on track with the development of the algorithm. Next week, I hope to work on the rest of the code to a point where we are able to start writing test cases for individual functions and the functions that will determine what the changes to the blinds should be. We will also be working on the Design Report as a team throughout the next week.

Current Progress:
This week, I got started with coding the API for the Light Area of Effect (LAOE). We first wanted to make sure our math was correct, so we took data points from one of our living rooms. We measured the horizontal distance from a corner of the window to the respective corner cast onto the ground (x) as well as the distance away from the window (y), and recorded the time of day so that we could find the altitude and the azimuth of the sun at that time.

I took these data points and applied the formula we had in mind to check the formula. Here is the manual math done with the data points to find the (x, y) position relative to a spot on the window:

The values did not match the data points within a 5 cm range as we had originally intended. We may need to make revisions to the formula going forwards, such as accounting for refraction and other factors.

Next Steps:
First, I will finish coding up the formula to map corners of the window projected onto the ground. Along with that, we will write an algorithm that will have to check if a point intersects this area/volume created by the window, as well as the algorithm for calculating the change to the blinds.

ECE Courses:
Since I am working on the software track, the greatest contribution to the skills I have utilized are those from software courses. This includes 15-112 for a great foundation in computer science and 15-462 for help with the LAOE algorithm.

Focused on fleshing out the design of the project and looked into how we will be designing the APIs, specifically the light area of effect algorithm. I created the following Git repository for the code we will be writing in the next week or so: https://github.com/djge/18500_GroupC1

I worked on a few diagrams to illustrate how the calculation in the Area of Effect of the Sun API works. Our group was not sure how the angle from north for the position of the sun might effect the reach of the area of effect from the window, so we conducted a few experiments using a paper bag with cutout windows and a flashlight. The following images clarify our vision for this function:

The results of the experiment seemed to show that the azimuth angle does not affect the distance from the window that is affected by light. We decided to go with this result and change the algorithm accordingly if it results in problems during testing.

So far, we are on schedule. Next week, I hope to get a working Sun Position calculating API with Elizabeth, start implementation on the area of effect API,  and focus on the design review/report with fully fleshed out diagrams of the schematics with our whole team on both the software and hardware end of the project.