Author: erikfeld

This week was productive for our team. We a few of our parts arrive, to prepare for extensive testing in the following weeks. The RFID sensor and individual chips both arrived.

This week I worked extensively on web framework research. I determined that for a genuine startup, our best bet for a framework is using react on the front end and Node.JS on the backend due to the extensive libraries available, and the overwhelming developer support. However another option is to use the python based Django framework, which can cover both front end and back end in a more familiar language. While python does have its performance shortcomings, Django may be the better bet due to the short amount of time we have to develop our project.

I believe our progress is still on schedule. Next week will be dedicated to integration and component testing. Assuming all goes to plan next week we should be in a very good place for our project, and may begin work on some of our bonus features, such as focussing on our green (i.e. what surface should we purchase for it, how elevated do we need it to be, keeping it to code for multiple individuals standing on it, etc.). Otherwise we will continue problem solving, either purchasing new components or rethinking possible solutions to individual problems.

Next week our main focus will be on individual component testing. How well does our RFID sensor work? How well do the individual RFID chips work (we have multiple)? How about our IMU? These are all extremely important tasks that we will be focusing on this week. If all of them work as expected, we will start integrating via software, translating data from each hardware component into software, and storing that data in our database. If not, we will consider potentially purchasing other components, or rethinking the scope of our project.

This week was fairly productive for both me and my team. Having a full week back from Atlanta, our team was able to collaborate and determine which materials were best to be purchased. We came to a decision on the RFID scanner, the RFID chip, and our IMU. I personally submitted the purchase order for the IMU. We should be able to get our hands on these parts this week. I also spent some time checking out the LIDAR unit we were bestowed. We determined detection of a golf ball is viable within a few meters, and plan to start writing code this week. We also met with Professor Kim with our modified idea, which he approves of.

I believe we are on schedule as of right now. We need to do a fair bit of testing this upcoming week, as well as start work on the web application.

I hope to have the IMU, RFID chip, and scanner in hands this week and get solid testing done on each. I would also like more research to be done on our Web App, and start writing some code.

This week I was unfortunately not able to accomplish much work, due to being out of town for my conference championship swim meet from Tuesday 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. However on Sunday (February 5th) I worked on getting our teams project proposal slides completed, and practiced delivering my speech.

I believe our progress is a bit behind, since both Seaver and I were out of town for the week, leaving CJ with a lot of research to do on his own.  Professor Kim would like us to change the scope of our project, so we certainly have a lot of work to take on.

Next week I would like to know exactly what components we will be purchasing, as well as nailing down delivery dates and cost. Communication with my team will be critical, such as learning what components CJ has already checked out, so we don’t waist time doing the same thing twice. I also want to have an updated, heavily detailed implementation that Professor Kim approves of.