Author: abmeza

This week me and my group was mainly focused initially on doing well for the presentation and giving the presentation. I was required to present this week so I spent a lot of my time practicing to make sure my presentation went smoothly. When our group was not working on the presentation, I spent my time trying to assist Sophia on the hardware pen, and try to get cleaner values sent over to the unity project. I also spent some time trying to figure out ways to clean up the data values being sent over. Even with our best efforts we were not able to make much progress, and because of this, I did some research for potential alternative implementations.

We at this point are still somewhat behind. We managed to accomplish all the tasks for the most part on our agenda, the issues is we simply have not been able to get them functioning well enough to make our game playable. To catchup to a finished product, we will simply have to put in a lot of work before demo day to make sure our final product is presentable and usable.

This week we will be working on our final report, poster, and video, and in addition to this work towards trying to get a playable game for our final demo of the project.

Personally this last week has consisted of a lot of troubleshooting with our hardware. After switching from uduino software to bluetooth software, it required starting the whole process of trying to connect the bluetooth module and processing the data being sent in unity so it could be used effectively by our game. Initially the bluetooth module itself was refusing to connect to anything, but after some trouble shooting, it eventually was able to work. It then required some steps to figure out how to get it to connect to the unity project, and the phone application. This also required figuring out how the bluetooth unity packages functioned in order to code them in our project. This was eventually resolved, and I was able to get data to be sent, but what followed was figuring out how to strength the bluetooth hardware in order to remain connected when sending data to our application, because it would disconnect frequently when first initially synced. Eventually I was able to stabilize this by simply adjusting how much data was being transferred over, and changing the voltage supply to the bluetooth hardware.

In terms of progress, we are somewhat behind since, even though integration is for the most part completed, we have not been given the chance to do thorough testing with our game, since we have only been able to get it to work recently. In order to get caught up, we will simply have to put in extra amount of time in order to make sure we can get some tests in before our presentations for this week.

Next week I hope to be able to help Sophia figure out how to stabilize the data being sent from our pen device, since currently the data being sent is not very clean. We also have not been able to make our app UI very user friendly, it is still in the testing phases, so the next plan is to make it more intuitive for our users to navigate, and make it look more like a finished product. I may also try to help Joseph with cross platform code, so we can also get our system working on multiple devices, as originally planned.

This week our group was mainly focused on trying to get prepared for our demos. For this week I was able to work on trying to integrate our hardware component (the prototype version of our pen) with our current application (the unity software we have currently integrated). This attempt was made with the unity package uduino. I was able to make it work, but unfortunately, it was not able to function as expected with the unity application once it was dowloaded into the application. Since it was not actually able to function as expected with the build, we have decided to pivot slightly, and consult the alternatives we had planned for communication between our application and hardware.

Since we have updated our schedule, our current progress is not currently behind, but it is hopefully on track to get our MVP finished on time for our final submission.

This week, we hope to troubleshoot a little bit more on trying to get wifi connection between our application and our hardware to work, but will also try to see if bluetooth connection will be useful as well, since wifi poses some issues when trying to connect to the universities wifi. This will be the main focus for the week since integration has become our groups priority.

This week our group has mainly been focused on making sure we are prepared for our demo presentation. I specifically have been working on the app as mentioned in the previous status report. There was a slight pivot that was mentioned prior though, because I have specifically been working on hopefully integrating out hardware with our application in some fashion. This has been done by trying to figure out how to use the Uduino package in Unity, which will help with sending data over from our pen device to our unity app. I was able to get it to work, and have been able to confirm that the two can communicate with each other.

Currently we are not necessarily behind, rather on track to make progress. This has readjusted our schedule slightly since we had originally planned on intricate integration taking place last, but for the demo and for practical reasons it make sense to get the MVP working.

This next week I hope to get it integrated where our pen device can communicate with the app, and also continue working on the app itself, so it is intuitive for our users to play the game.

I have been able to get access to the phone devices so that I could start testing and using the actual Unity interface for testing. After taking some times trying to figure out how to get the phones to work, with unity, I was able to start trying to figure out how to code our game in unity. Most of this week was getting accustomed to the new interface, and also some small implementations as well.

In terms of progress, we are still a little bit more behind than we would have liked to be currently in the project, but not so much so that it is an issue for us at the moment. Extra time will need to be taken to try to catch up, and make sure we do not get more behind than we currently are.

This next week I hope to get a majority of the base of the game created, so that once it is time for our demo, we will have something to show.

This week I mostly worked on continuing to understand how unity works, by messing with some of the packages in my own projects.  Our group was able to get the extra android phones that were needed at the end part of this week. This will allow me to soon start implementing the actual game for our product, since phones are required in order to test and run the VR packages that we need to use to create our game. I was able to verify that the phones are working , but not actually able to start using it to develop anything for our game this week. I also spent some time working on the ethics assignment for the week as well, which took more time than anticipated.

Currently in terms of progress, I am still slightly behind like I was prior, but did not get any more ahead or behind than our prior week. In general progress is steady, and should be able to catch up once I start implementing games.

Next week, I will be able to get started on creating on creating the game and hopefully helping my partners with whatever else they need as well.