Olivia’s Status Report for 3/23

This week we received multiple vital parts of our design from the suppliers, so this week was spent testing and ensuring the PCB design matched our new specifications. Since I tested the RFID, motor, and attempted testing the microphone and cell, as well as after multiple discussions and a meeting with Tamal to figure out specific logistics of the PCB to ensure correctness we had to make several changes. We realized that we bought an analog microphone and that if we wanted to use it, we would either need to create our own digital processor or get a digital microphone. We decided to go forward with a new microphone as that also helped with better compatibility with the ESP and overall design requirements. I also ordered a new cellular device, as after discussing how the solder pad cell chip we currently have would work, we realized a better and cheaper option would be to go with a cellular kit that already has a prepaid cell plan that we could use, as well as great depth documentation and discussion of projects which will help with debugging. It was also exciting as the new cell chip has GPS which minimized our parts and provided us with GPS location without additional modules. As our design finally starts coming together, it is exciting to start putting things together and visualize what our final design will look like.