Thomas Lee
- I spent this week trying to understand the new lighting fixtures, and creating the different lighting schemes for these IDeATe Lab lights instead of our original Furious Five RG lights. Besides locating and procuring the lights, the ENTTEC DMX to USB converter, and the proper cables and DMX terminator plug, I ordered a set of all these components through the Purchase Request form to ensure that we will have an operating set these coming weeks. I also deciphered the cryptic channel & intensity mappings for the new SlimPAR PRO Q USB lighting fixtures, as the channel IDs sensitized by the Java port of DmxPy did not align exactly with the values provided in the User Manual for the lights. Using this mapping I was able to create the first two lighting schemes we would be using, and successfully tested them by operating the lights in real time with the Java processes administering the patterns. The video below shows one lighting test sample, and demonstrates that we are finally generating reliable DMX signals and controlling the lighting at a fine-grained resolution using a lighting microservice operating right out of the recommender module (which was previously demonstrated to work correctly on the second RPi):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pNcK16PDUi-hqoaK9zqlAS_2xBKROgXs/view?usp=sharing - My progress is on schedule, however I would have liked to help start module testing a little earlier.
- In the next week I hope to finish the rest of the lighting models & integrate the light system, collect more survey & testing data, and polish the whole system while checking complete end-to-end functionality.
========================================================== - As I have worked on this project, there are a few new tools and pieces of engineering knowledge that I have acquired as necessary for different parts of my project. For example, I learned how to use a Raspberry Pi, how to use web sockets under a Springboot framework for a live service web app, and how to control hardware lighting fixtures without on-board processors using a computer program by generating & transmitting DMX signals. In order to learn these skills, I had to use a range of different learning strategies, my primary methods being online research, following public tutorials, and reading documentation from hardware suppliers’ websites. I also consulted previous ECE Capstone groups for their expertise in utilizing certain technologies (such as controlling a DMX lighting fixture using a computer program), or asking my teammates (to learn more advanced version control tactics on Github) learning how to do different things directly from a real person. I also applied the programming strategies I learned from classes at Carnegie Mellon, such as Web Apps & Distributed Systems.