This week, I spent the majority of my time working on initial setup of hardware components. As a team we decided to switch from an Xavier to a Jetson Nano because the nano would require less power. Initially, we also did so because we thought the Nano would already have the ability to connect to WiFi (which I later learned is not the case). I met with Tamal twice this past week to set up the Jetson (first the Xavier and then the Nano after we switched). After initial connectivity issues, I was able to connect the Nano to the ethernet in HH 1307 and ssh from my laptop into the Nano. Since the Nano does not have the ability to connect to WiFi, I also placed an order for a USB WiFi dongle that is compatible with it so that we can use the Nano outside of the classroom when working in the future.
After the Nano was set up, Sirisha and I met to connect the accelerometer to the Nano and test it. We ended up spending an hour running around campus trying to find female-to-female wires (like the ones that come with Arduinos) that we could use to connect the accelerometer to the Nano using i2c. We found them in Tech Spark and then needed. We also soldered the accelerometers to the posts that came with them, which solved our connectivity issues and we were able to detect the connection to the Nano with “i2cdetect -r -y 1”, which showed that it was connected on port 68.
I also spent some time changing the dummy data shown on the metrics page of the web app to look more like what will realistically be sent/displayed.
My progress is mostly on schedule with what I set for myself to do this week. I had initially said that I would write some initial code for the accelerometer this week, but with the setup time for the Jetson and accelerometer both being far longer than planned for, I was unable to get to that task.
Before the demo, I hope to complete the initial code for measuring and printing the readings from the accelerometer connected to the Nano, with some additional action or print statement triggered when the readings indicate above a certain speed threshold (likely 5mph). For the rest of the week, I will get WiFi working on the Nano with the dongle and work with my teammates to test and tune the system.