Category: Alan’s status reports

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, I worked on our final bottle assembly. We have a new board, which should be more stable and less vulnerable to solders breaking, since it uses JHT connectors. I crimped connectors, tested sensor connections, and debugged solder and connection issues. I also worked on our final bottle, sealing sensors in place,  moving the display and adding a new switch (for the battery circuit) to the taller bottom compartment.

Is your progress on schedule or behind?

On schedule

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

Next week, I’ll finish the battery circuit and clean up any final issues with the bottle, to make sure we’re ready for a successful demo.

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 I worked with Erin to resolder our assembly and produce the bottle we will use in the final demo. I also got the display working, and it shows liquid level, temperature, and classification. I then wrote and FSM to detect when the bottle is stable based on the stability of the ultrasonic sensor’s reading, eliminating the need for a pressure plate. Finally, I designed the integration tests we are performing to validate our final product

Is your progress on schedule or behind?

On schedule

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

Next week, I’ll continue testing the final bottle,  will add more liquid samples, and the capability for user-added liquids.

 

As you’ve designed, implemented and debugged your project, what new tools or new knowledge did you find it necessary to learn to be able to accomplish these tasks? What learning strategies did you use to acquire this new knowledge?

I’ve learned a lot about different sensors used to test and identify liquids, their principles of operation, and their libraries. I mostly learned this by googling, reading reviews, forums, and wikis. I also learned about bluetooth low energy, again, mostly by googling, reading forums and tutorials. Finally, I learned some things about hardware, fabrication, and durability, mostly by talking to classmates and trial and error as we build our product.

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, I worked on getting the prototype ready for the interim demo. I worked on our backup microcontroller (after we had issues with the Adafruit’s, where they stopped working), re-writing code to be compatible with it. I collaborated with Erin to get the new setup working on the app. I also worked on the new physical prototype (as part of a team effort), and we now have a leak-free, working, classifying bottle! Finally, I calibrated the classifying algorithm for the bottle with nothing in it, water, milk, coffee, and orange juice, and rehearsed for, and delivered my portion of, the team demo.

Is your progress on schedule or behind?

On schedule

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

Next week, I will work on improving classifier accuracy, with more data points, and in detecting when the bottle is stood up correctly, with FSR’s. I will also begin work on testing, running a fuzzer and a static analysis tool on my arduino code.

 

Now that you have some portions of your project built, and entering into the verification and validation phase of your project, provide a comprehensive update on what tests you have 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?

I will run tests with the sensors in the bottle against the ground truth – the thermometer with a reference one, and TDS and turbidity against reference metrics for our liquids. I will test these against the expected (and acceptable) tolerance of the sensors. For the color sensor, I will test it against different liquids in our final bottle, to make sure the interference of the bottle material is small enough to still give use usable data (as it has been in previous translucent prototypes). This will make sure our final assembly is within our tolerance.

I will also run a fuzzer and a static analysis tool on my microcontroller code, to ensure the code is reliable and secure, and does not have egregious, easily correctable faults in it.

For the classifier, I will test it with different beverages to ensure it can correctly classify them within an allowable tolerance. As I provide more data points and better calibration, I will expect the accuracy to improve.

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, I accomplished a few things for the project:

1-Added Total Dissolved Solids and Turbidity sensor to the circuit, and tested them, finding significant differences in the liquids tests (water, milk, and coffee).

2-Re-wired the circuit to use a single Adafruit ItsyBitsy Arduino board, rather than 2.

3-Improved the ble connection, writing a TCP-like protocol that waits for requests and waits for acknowledgement from the recipient.

4-Tested with different liquids (milk, water, coffee) for color, TDS, and turbidity, finding significant differences.

5-Wrote a vector-distance based classifier in python, to differentiate liquids.

 

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

On schedule

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

For the next week, I will fabricate the bottle, placing the sensors and holding them in place with sealant (as one of my current problems for testing is that I need to hold all sensors in place to get the readings), and work with Matthew to integrate with the cadded parts. I will also work with Erin on the app, to process ble packages and do the classifying logic in the app itself. Finally, I will plan and rehearse the interim demo, to identify potential issues and make sure it goes smoothly.

 

BLE communication (Adafruit ItsyBitsy <-> Bluefruit app on my Android phone):

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, I worked on bluetooth. I managed to connect the ItsyBitsy boards to my phone using the Adafruit’s testing app, to my computer using a python script and, finally, to our app (with Erin working on the bluetooth code for React)! I relayed sensor data (temperature, pressure, and color), and tested that transmission is reliable. I also received data back from my cellphone to the Arduino board, also reliably. Furthermore, I wrote the FSM to only relay liquid level data the first time after a bottle is closed (to avoid wasting power).

Other than this, I tested the new waterproof ultrasonic sensor, which doesn’t seem to be working, so I ordered a new one, as well as RS485 communication modules to test with another sensor we had also tried. I did some work (both by myself and with Matt) on capacitance testing, and it seems that the variations found in liquids (from a study done by Matt) are rather small, and heavily affected by room temperature. Finally, I looked into turbidity as a possible metric and ordered a sensor to test it.

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

On schedule

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

Over the next week, I plan on writing a classifier, based on color, density, and possibly capacitance and turbidity, and tests its accuracy with different drinks. For this first step, I will write it in a Python project, for ease of testing.

 

Bluetooth communication:

Arduino serial monitor:

 

Adafruit’s Bluefruit testing app, showing the device, the transmitted data, and the received data:

• 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).

Last week, I mostly work on the design report. Once this was finished, I turned back to the hardware and integration. I helped Matt test the waterproof ultrasonic sensor, and figured out the issue was with the RS485 protocol. I placed the order for the new sensor. I also investigated an issue with an order we hadn’t received (a photoelectric water level sensor) and coordinated to re-place the order – the sensor should be here sometime next week.

Finally, I picked up the Adafruit ItsyBitsy board from receiving, set them up for usage (soldered pins and burned bootloaders) and assembled the bottle circuits on a breadboard! As you can see on the picture, there are two independent circuits. The one on the left is the bottom assembly, with a thermometer, color sensor, and pressure plate, while the one on the right is the top assembly, with an ultrasonic sensor and a pressure plate. I used driver code (adapted and combined from online tutorials) to ensure that all the sensors worked together as I assembled them.

Finally, I began testing the bluetooth connection. I succesfully ran bluetooth code from the ItsyBitsy, but am having issues on the React end.

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

On schedule

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

Next week, I hope to successfully connect the ItsyBitsy board to the app over BLE. I will also write the FSM to only update the level reading when necessary, according to the pressure plate readings.

 

Circuit: