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Erik Feldmann Status Report for 04/29/2023

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).

This week I continued my focus on the front end of the WebApp. My goal was to integrate some JavaScript to allow for certain player’s data to not be shown depending on previous data inputted on the start screen. Since currently all three players data is shown regardless of how many names you enter. This proved to be harder than I expected, as my experience with JavaScript is very limited. However I am confident that I will get everything working by demo day.

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

Progress is on schedule. If needed, everything works to the point that we could demo today. However there are plenty of last minute things we would like to nail down this upcoming week.

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

I plan to complete the overhaul of the front end this week, completing successful JavaScript integration. I also plan to help finish beautifying the course. Laying out the felt, putting on some finishing touches, some supports etc.

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Erik Feldmann Status Report for 04/22/2023

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).

This week I spent most of my time improving the look of the webApp. Using HTML combined with CSS I was able to greatly improve our website design, allowing for a much more modern look. I had to spend a great deal of time learning CSS, as I had never used it for a project before. I added a background image for every page, as well as stylizing the basic fonts seen throughout the website, trying to personalize the site and give off modern golf flare.

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 our progress is right on schedule. The bulk of the project is complete, we just need to finish printing new balls, laying down the felt, and installing the RFID scanner underneath the course. Since all of our integrations are basically finished, I believe the final steps of the project should be easily completed in the last few weeks we have before our presentation.

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

I plan to integrate a graphic display for each hit in the webApp, instead of a pure numbers format. I also plan to help install the official golf ball cup and “grass” on our course, to complete it.

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Erik Feldmann Status Report 04/08/2023

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 week was spent heavily on getting our project ready for our interim demo the previous Monday. I was focussing on moving the website from being local on Seaver’s laptop to available on the internet with a real web address. This was fairly time consuming, as it took some time to find a platform that would allow for free web hosting, while also being manageable to use. We decided to use pythonanywhere.com since it allowed for easy migration with our Django backend. The rest of my time was spent helping CJ work out the kinks of the lidar ball detection.

As for the rest of the week, I spent more time working on React to develop a front end for our WebApp, and I also spent time developing a logo for the team to be displayed on our site.

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 our schedule is on track at this point. We need to buckle down this week and fully integrate our IMU, but once that gets accomplished I believe the rest of this project will be smooth sailing.

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

I hope to have a live front end available to be seen by the end of next week. I also hope to have the bluetooth of the IMU be fully integrated into the webapp as well.

Now that you are entering into the verification and validation phase of your project, provide a comprehensive update on what tests you have you run or are planning to run. In particular, how will you analyze the anticipated measured results to verify your contribution to the project meets the engineering design requirements or the use case requirements?

We have set goals for LIDAR accuracy, and to test them we can roll a golf ball, read the measurement of distance from hole on the WebApp, and then verify that measurement using a tape measurer, checking if we are within 3cm of the measured distance. Another (trickier) test to handle is that of the IMU. We have ideas to either record video of us striking a ball with a putter, or simply timing a certain roll distance to then extrapolate our many measurements we are taking, and then comparing those to our expected results, checking to see if we are within our margin of error.

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Team Weekly Status Report 04/01/2023

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?

At this point, there are only a couple of aspects our design is missing. The first is the full integration of the BT for the IMU. This should not be a huge blocker anymore. Seaver was attempting to integrate a BT library on MacOS, but we have decided that Linux may be a better option for integrating BT with the OS. MacOS tends to be a bit less lenient on using some of the low level functionality like Bluetooth.

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?

One design change we had to make was the location of the LiDAR sensor. We had to move it to the center of the course in order for it to get a better view of the course. We also have considered adding other restrictions to the length of the course because the LiDAR resolution is not good enough. CJ has discovered that the sensor can sometimes be unreliable, we will attempt to get a percentage this week of how often we can count on its data. Part of the problem is it sometimes just freaks out and loses the location of the ball at seemingly random times.

Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.

We are up-to-date with our current schedule.

 

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Erik’s Weekly Status Report 04/01/2023

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).

This week I focused on transforming the API’s of our webApp from REST to graphQL. This was done due to the fact that we were creating an exceedingly large number of endpoints due to the various different functions that our webApp would handle. Updating ball distance, starting a new game, ending a game, were all required different endpoints using a REST API, therefore we decided to work on transitioning to the project to graphQL to have only one endpoint, with a large variety of Json like inputs. I was able to successfully setup graphQL and successfully update the database using it on my branch of the codebase. While there is more to add, this is a very promising start on the API migration, and hardest part of the migration.

 

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 our progress may be a bit behind, simply due to the fact that many of our orders have been taking much longer than expected to arrive. We have ordered a battery, some “artificial turf”, and compatible RFID chips, which all have not arrived yet. This is unfortunately slowing down our integration, and potentially leaving us with a less fleshed out Interim demo then we would like. This issue should be easily resolved once the parts arrive however, as we have been doing great work integrating the rest of the components, so once these pieces finally arrive, the last few steps should be quite manageable.

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

By our iterm demo on Monday, I want us to be able to show functional ball tracking in a solo putting game, and accurately keep score of hits, and when the player finally makes it in the whole. Assuming our IMU battery, and other essential items arrive this week, we should be able to have accurate feedback on speed and club angle/ball path as interesting data metrics for our demo as well.

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Team Weekly Status Report 03/25/2023

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?

Right now the most significant risk that could jeopardize the success of the project is still the IMU. Fortunately for our team we have been able to calibrate the IMU and read out accurate measurements of acceleration and velocity. However our major roadblock at the moment is making the built in bluetooth functional. Using the packages the manufacturer of the IMU recommends, we have only been able to send one byte of data at a time, as a message (string) that is over a byte long simply gets truncated and only the first 8 bits of data are received. We believe that there is a solution, as forums online have talked about using an older driver for the IMU can fix this issue. We have also considered the idea of doing the computation on the IMU, as it has a fairly powerful microchip on it. But in case all of these options fail, we are fully prepared to move on to a new IMU (with external bluetooth chip) on Wednesday, and increase the size of the ball to house it if needed.

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?

As of now, no changes have been made. We have solidified the design of our “golf ball”, by 3D printing it as a screwable design. The prints are very smooth and roll very well, with plenty of space to house our current IMU and battery design.  (I would post a picture but I sadly left the 3D printed balls at school) We have also decided that our frontend will be developed in react, which should pair nicely with our Django backend.

Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.

We plan to have accurate ball distance (LIDAR measurement) and hit and make detection (IMU and pressure sensor) of a single ball integrated by our project demo. This puts us slightly behind pace as to where we were a few weeks ago. However this still gives us plenty of time to fully complete the 3 player mode with accurate measurements about each putt.

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Erik Feldmann Status Report 03/25/2023

This week my primary focus was establishing a front end for our webApp. While I was gone at NCAA’s the prior week, CJ and Seaver made great progress integrating our hardware and webApp together, with Seaver focussing on the backend of the webApp, and CJ focussing on the hardware. This left me with the opportunity to start work on the frontend, as that is the one aspect of our project we had not touched yet. I am working on the front end in React JS, something I am unfamiliar with. I am learning a new language, so its taking me longer than I would like to create an established product. However, I have full confidence I will become proficient in React (and JavaScript) by the end of the semester.

I believe we are well on schedule considering the integration we have accomplished so far. The one place we are lacking on is our physical green that we need to build, and we plan to address that tomorrow (03/26), and get started building.

Next week I plan to push a working front end to production, leaving us with a nice webApp that looks like a bit more than HTML. Also as a team we plan to have the green at least partially assembled, with the skeleton frame of the wood put together. We placed an order last week for our “grass”, and we are 3D printing balls and a hole. All in all, our project is coming together quite well.

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Erik Feldmann Status Report 03/18/2023

This week I was unfortunately not able to accomplish much work, due to being out of town for the swim NCAA championship swim meet from Monday until Saturday. Every day I was at the pool for over 12 hours, so I had very little to no downtime to do any work for any of my classes.

I believe our progress is on schedule, as Seaver and CJ are handling the work very well.

Next week I will be working with CJ and Seaver on further integration and working by myself on the WebApp.

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Team Status Report for 03/11/2023

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 for the success of the project currently is still the IMU. We were not able to test it significantly this past week, especially with its use inside a rolling ball. The biggest issue with our IMU is that it appears to be the only IMU with built in bluetooth on the market, a feature we really want. So if this device doesn’t meet our requirements, we may need to take a step back and have to change a few things.

One contingency plan, separate from what was mentioned last week is to purchase a separate IMU and bluetooth chip and connect them with a raspberry pie. This would be more bulky, and potentially mean us changing what size ball we use, but a viable possibility nonetheless.

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?

No major changes have been made to the existing system’s overall structure or idea. We have determined what ball we will be using, and have ordered it. It will be modular, with two separate halves screwing together. We also have changed our RFID chip to be a smaller sticker design, that will be compatible with our RIFD scanner.

Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.

No schedule updates at the moment.

As you’ve now established a set of sub-systems necessary to implement your project, what new tools have your team determined will be necessary for you to learn to be able to accomplish these tasks?

The past few week after recieving all of our orders for parts we finally had the opportunity to take a step forward and look at some of the smaller details of this project. For one we realized we needed to nail down a design for our ball, whether that be an actual golf ball, a hollow golf ball, or some seperate sphere design– and we managed to pick a design. Some other smaller details that we still need to iron out: Materials for the green– we know what we want the exterior to look like, but we need to design a good support structure to elevate the green so we can have our hardware situated underneath it. A final component to think about further is the hole. We have toyed with the idea of 3D printing a custom design, so that our pressure sensor will always be touched perfectly, or just buying an standard golf hole and modifying it from there. These are ideas that our team will be discussing and resolving this week.

 

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Erik Feldmann’s Status Report 03/11/2023

The week prior to spring break was a busy one. All of our original parts that we had ordered had finally arrived, Including our IMU and RFID scanner, so it was time to get testing. However with the looming due date of our design report, writing for the report ended up taking the majority of my time. We also determined that our RFID tags we had purchased were incompatible with our scanner, however CJ was able to find some smaller tags that should do the trick just fine.

I believe our progress is right on track, our slip up with the RFID tag should be no problem, as there is no real fine tuning needed for individual tags that would be very time consuming. We can get an order out for the new tags this upcoming week and be good to go. My one concern is that I will be gone for the entire week next week for my last swim meet of the season. This will put more of a burden on CJ and Seaver, but they are both productive and capable teammates, who should be able to make up for my absence.

Since I will be on the road in North Carolina all week, I will be very limited in the work I will be able to accomplish. So I will not be able to do any hardware testing or integrations. However when I find free time, I will try to continue my work on the webApp, since that is work that I can do remotely on my laptop.