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Team Status Report for Apr 29th

  • 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 at this moment building the gloves. Originally we planned to sew the chips onto the gloves. Since none of us know how to sew, we end up deciding to hot glue the chips to Velcro tapes, which are then taped to our wool gloves. The tape can also act as a buffer to prevent the pins on the chip from poking through the gloves and causing harm. As a contingency plan, we could ask Karen’s friend to teach us sewing, but I think it was hard to set a time to meet given our schedules.

  • Were any changes made to the existing design of the system? Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward?

There was no change to our design.

  • Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.

The schedule has not changed.

  • Component you got working.

The radio chips have been integrated with the synthesizer. The left hand’s pitch angle now can control the volume, while the right hand’s roll angle now can control the pitch bend. We will post a video here once we got to the lab tomorrow.

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Oscar’s Status Report for Apr 29th

  • What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or
    photos that demonstrate your progress.

I was trying to attach the chips to the gloves last week. I tried zip ties, but they seemed too thick to go through the gloves.  I also tried sewing them on,  but the pins on the back of the chip can sometimes poke through the gloves and weren’t comfortable to wear. I think I will hot glue the chips to 3M Velcro strips and then stick them onto the gloves. That way, I can rearrange the components easily and take out the batteries for charging.

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

I am behind schedule. I planned to make one glove this week, but sewing is harder than expected. I did not complete building one glove and I was out of town last weekend. I will spend most of tomorrow in the lab with Yuqi to finish building the gloves.

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

By the end of Thursday, I hope to build both gloves.

By the end of Friday, I hope to merge my code base with Karen’s and clean up dead code.

By the end of Sunday, I hope to finish all integration testing and get out system ready for the final demo.

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Yuqi’s Status Report for 04.29

  • What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or
    photos that demonstrate your progress.

This week I spent most of the time on final presentation. I worked with my teammates to do some tests on our product and finished the slides.

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

I am on schedule.

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

I am hoping to work with my teammates and finished the integration of all parts. I will also prepare for the final demo.

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Yuqi’s Status Report for 04.22

  • What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or
    photos that demonstrate your progress.

I finished the code for radio transmitter and tested it this week.

receiver

transmitter_1

transmitter_2

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

I am behind schedule. To make up for the progress, I will meet with Oscar tomorrow and fix the radio circuits.

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

I am hoping to test the radio transmitters with gyroscopes. I will also build the glove circuit next week. (might be able to finish it by tomorrow.)

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Karen’s Status Report for April 22

  • What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or
    photos that demonstrate your progress.

This week I changed the color detection system to only detect one color at a time to avoid the chaos caused by different lighting levels (especially for green and yellow in dimmer light settings). I also added a classification section that tells the system which quadrant the majority of the colored box is in, so that the synthesizer can produce music accordingly. I also worked with my team on the final presentation ppt.

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

My progress is behind because I need to update the UI for gesture selection. I did not think it was needed earlier, but then my friend who tested this told me it is hard to read.

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

Integrated product with other sections (hardware/synthesizer)

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Team Status Report for Apr 22th

  • 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 at this moment is the radio circuits. According to Yuqi, they work when they are powered by Arduino Unos while connected to the laptop. However, it is not working when I tried to power it using the Arduino Nanos. Yuqi and Oscar will be testing the radio chips with power supplies and power regulators+battery tomorrow. There are two contingency plans. First, we might end up putting Arduino Unos on the gloves to power the chips. Second, we could also buy several power regulator chips and power the radio chips directly.

  • Were any changes made to the existing design of the system? Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward?

There was no change to our design, but we might change the way we power our radio chips. This might mean we would either buy extra Arduino Unos or power regulator chips in the future.

  • Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.

The schedule has not changed.

  • Component you got working.

The radio chips are now working. Two transmitters can successfully send one integer each to the receiver. However, the transmitters are all powered by Arduino Unos, which are in turn powered by the laptop.

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Oscar’s Status Report for Apr 22th

  • What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or
    photos that demonstrate your progress.

I was trying to integrate the radio chips with my synthesizer last week. However, I could not get them to work. I have checked that they are neither faulty nor my Arduino Nano. Also, since they worked when Yuqi tested them with Arduino Uno and bypass capacitors, I think the problem lies with the Arduino Nano’s current draw limit. I think the radio chip might need to draw current directly from the batteries, instead of from the Nano.

Update (Sunday, 4/23)

After some debugging, the radio chips are working and they can be powered directly by the Nanos. Here’s a demo video. Although in the video, the Nanos are powered by USB cables, we’ve also verified that they can be powered by two 3.7 LiPO batteries in series. Since the radio chip now works when using shorter wires to connect them and the Nanos, I think that it was the long wires and the breadboard that I previously used that caused too much noise.

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

I am behind schedule. I thought I could debug and integrate the radio circuits with my synthesizer this week. To make up for the progress, I will meet with Yuqi tomorrow and fix the radio circuits.

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

I hope to debug and integrate the radio circuits and build one glove next week.

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Yuqi’s Weekly Report for Apr 8th

  • What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

I finished the radio transmitter code. The receiver can receive data from other transmitters. I will post a video later(on Sunday).

  • Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be
    taken to catch up with the project schedule. What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

It is on schedule. I will work with the team and start integration.

  • 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?
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Team Status Report for April 8th

  • 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 at this moment is our integrated system speed not meeting our time metric requirements. The latency between gesture input and sound output is relatively high, and there is a clear lag that can be felt by users. Currently we are changing to a color-based hand tracking system to reduce the lag of the hand tracking part, and wavetable synthesis to reduce the lag of the synthesizer. Because we are essentially using convolution and a filter to track colors in a video frame, we can lower the resolution of the image and/or search patches of image to speed up the process.

  • Were any changes made to the existing design of the system? Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward?

Instead of using a hand tracking model via mediapipe, we end up reverting back to the initial design where we use color to locate the hand. We reduced the number of colored targets from 3 to 1 because it is easier for classification and the user can figure out what sound they are producing earlier. We also bought a webcam so that we don’t have to tune our color filters based on individual laptop webcam. Besides the financial cost, there were no additional costs as the webcam has already been integrated into our system (both on Windows and macOS)..

  • Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.

The schedule is the same as the new gantt chart from last week.

  • Component you got working.

Now we have a basic system that allows the user to produce sound by moving their hands across the screen. The system will track the user’s middle finger through color differences (users will wear a colored finger cot) and produce the note corresponding to the finger location. So far the system supports 8 different notes (8 different quadrants on the screen). Compared to last week, this system now supports sampling arbitrary instrument sounds and dual channel audio.