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Olivia’s Status Report for 2/24

Helped work on the slides and presentation for Bradley’s big day this past Monday. It was very exciting and hear from people. In the process of working on Bradley’s slides, design changes were implemented. I figured out quickly that the ESP32 could be used as an MCU for most of our materials. I also had the duty of figuring out how to power the whole pendant. This would require an understanding of what devices would be made passive, only awake for short periods, and what would be required to stay on at all times. Knowing this information helped me create an idea of how much power each would need, comparing this with device specifications it was easier to understand how. to predict what the average input would be and how large the battery would it entail.

This week I will begin researching ESP communication beginning in order to start communication between the pendant and the mobile app.

Hoping to ensure a good portion of a parts are ordered as we have finally finalized our design idea and have a much better understanding of how a feasible approach will work.

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Anika’s Status Report for 2/24

This week I continued working on the Companion app. I added a temporary logo to our app created multiple pages within the app, one for trigger preferences and one for setting emergency contacts (with more pages within those). For the emergency contacts page I did research on how to get access/permission to retrieve the user’s contacts via the app and displaying the contact information. I then incorporated this into the app so we are able to make use of the person’s contact’s that are already there. Now I need to implement being able to add a new contact in and how to store this information in our app to be sent/used by the jewelrly if necessary. I think my progress on the companion app is on schedule, but I hope to start the PCB design this week

In the next week I hope to get figured out how to save information (from our trigger settings) and pass it back through pages for the companion app so we can use that information and pass it to our actual jewelry device. In addition, I will do some more research on packages for acquiring GPS location for setting the location radius triggers.

I also want to get started and make significant progress on the necklace PCB design. In order to get this completed we need to spend time as a team finalizing components/dimensions of each component to draw up the design and get it ordered.

I have attached a video of the progress made on the app:

App Progress Link

 

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Anika’s Status Report for 2/17

 

This week we spent a lot of time figuring out the details on our design implementation. The biggest discussion of the week was figuring out how we want to connect our ring and pendant and send signals between the two. We initially had come up with communicating between the ring and pendant using bluetooth, but we set up a meeting with Professor Bain on Thursday to figure out alternative options such as an implementation involving RFID. Our discussion was very helpful and he provided insight on  how to  implement passive/non-passive RFID communication between our ring and our pendant. We’ve since decided to move forward with that approach.

Based on our previous Gantt chart we are a little behind, but we have since updated our chart to account for more realistic time allocated to research and coming up with a well thought out design plan, as well as figure out what components we need to order in order to ensure a smoother process later on.

This week I was able to set up and get starting on creating a companion app. I spent time familiarizing myself with Flutter dealing with setup/build issues and was able to create a Home Page for the application. I didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted to due to heavy workload and athletics this week; however, I hope to add more details to the homepage and create navigation to other pages for our different application tasks like trigger settings and contact preferences. I have attached a picture of the home page below:

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Olivia’s Status Report for 2/17

This week was dedicated to working on our design implementation and gathering resources to figure out what, how much, and where we will buy materials for our project. This week I have put in 15+ hours in different aspects. This included extensive research into parts, meetings with professors to get a better understanding of our options with designs (which after one meeting led to hours of changes to parts of our implementation and different questions/concerns that arose with new methods/ideas for the project), as well as continuously meeting with the rest of my team to ensure we are all up-to-date and informed on any changes the others have made.  While according to our original plan, we are a bit behind schedule, we updated this schedule as we did not realize the real-time timing that it would take to work on several aspects of the project. This truly has nothing to do with being behind schedule, but rather not properly allocating enough time for some work ( figuring out exact specifications for what our design would need) versus allocating more than the needed amount for other work (buying components, setting up design presentation slides and document). This week I hope to deliver the finalized design description for round 1 of our design so that orders for materials can be made by the end of the week. With this in mind, I am on the right track, as today (2/17) I spent +5 hours researching different parts and materials that could work well and have narrowed down the design to 1-3 different options per material/design goal. As well as set up a meeting with Professor Bain to ask his opinion on RFID communication (which was tremendously helpful!), which led to a completely new perspective on how we could implement passive/non-passive RFID communication between the ring and pendant.

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Team Status Report for 2/17

 

This week we made a few changes to our design after feedback, further research, and meeting faculty members for advice. In our proposal, we wanted to use bluetooth for the ring to communicate with the pendant, which received pushback from students and faculty. We initially thought it would be the most reliable way for a button press to communicate with the pendant. However, we started to have our doubts from this feedback, and eventually met with James Bain, who gave us possible alternatives. He suggested that we use UHF RFID to communicate from the ring to the pendant. If we use passive RFID, this will completely eliminate the need for a battery in the ring. Looking for a Bluetooth module and battery small enough was a problem when trying to keep the ring compact.

Outside of RIFD, we also changed a few parts of the pendant, such as adding an Antenna, specifying a uni-directional microphone (to reduce noise), and SIM.

During our presentation, one of the students suggested another trigger for us, which if the ring and pendant separate a certain amount of distance. We thought that was a great idea and have added that into our design.

Some of the things that we are worried about for the success of our project are voice detection in a crowded place and the pendant’s battery lasting past 6 hours. For voice detection, we are trying a uni-directional microphone to reduce noise. We will also try to reduce issues with crowded places on the software side as well. For battery life, the main obstacle is the voice trigger. The contingency plan will be for the user to turn on voice detection when they think it is necessary, rather than being active all the time.

Our updates schedule is in our design review slides.

A was written by Anika, B was written by Olivia, C was written by Bradley

Part A: In regards to considerations of public health, safety, or welfare, our project attempts to tackle these three considerations as follows:

Health/Safety – The jewelry system operates as safety device meant to help a person contact help when in dangerous situations or are facing physical harm. With multiple options on how to alert authorities and emergency contacts the device provides the user with a strong sense of security. In addition, because our jewelry is designed with the intention of being discreet the user does not have to worry about drawing excessive unwanted attention while wearing the devices, which improves their psychological well-being.

Welfare:  It is a basic need for people to be able to go about their day without having to worry about/encounter dangerous situations, and this device aims to mitigate this risks by seeking help efficiently and quietly.

Part B: In regards to social factors and how they play a part in our project: Culture: With discretion and protection of individuals in mind this must ensure that its follows cultural norms when it comes to jewelry and wearable technology, ensuring that if certain cultures have requirements that we are meeting them so that anybody can use/wear them, this also includes our audio recognition, it must have multilingual support and cater to not just English speaking people. For Social factors this includes accessibility and usability, with this in mind, our button must be easily pressed for example or the mobile app must be easily used for people with low-technology proficiency. In regards to political factors, we must ensure we are following all different area’s regulations and privacy restrictions as different counties, states, and countries have massively differing rule sets. For economic factors, we intend to make the jewelry cost-friendly for a younger demographic that has limited spending power.

Part C: with consideration of economic factors. Economic factors are those relating to the system of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

Our product may share traits with other products on the market, does not share the same principles in terms of cost and user experience. When looking online for similar products, they typically will go higher than $149 dollars for retailing. Furthermore, products like inviswear require a costly subscription on top of that. We plan to make a product that is much more affordable and free of a subscription requirement, while still looking fashionable and discrete.

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Bradley’s Status Report for 2/17

This week I worked on getting on preparing for the design review presentation, as I will be the one presenting. This included taking the feedback from our proposal while also making our testing plans, implementation, and use cases, more specific and quantitative. We met with James Bain in regards for how we should connect the pendant with the ring, since we heard from Tamal he taught the antenna class at one point. He super helpful and gave us suggestions, such as active or passive RFID or using hearing aid batteries. After discussing, we arrived at using RFID to communicate.

Our initial gantt chart was a bit ambitious, so we adjusted it (finishing the app layout or getting the hardware to connect the ring and the pendant wouldn’t have happened this week). However, I don’t think we are behind schedule since I feel like we are prepared for the design review. But we are looking into finalizing what parts we will order by the end of next week. I specifically will be looking into microphones to order, buttons, batteries, etc. Our research for the design review will help inform me what to order, as well as feedback from the design review.

 

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Bradley’s Status Report 2/10

This week we worked on the proposal presentation. I helped with brainstorming the requirements needed for the proposal as well as creating the slides. While brainstorming, we reiterated our original plan from the abstract along with the advice given from Neha and Professor Mukherjee. I was able to identify the protocol we would use to communicate with the ring to pendant (bluetooth). This is because we want the most reliable way to have the button work on the first try, regardless of direction and clothing. After our meeting, I started to ponder which other triggers we would want to use for SOS. The ones I felt confident in for MVP were voice and GPS location. Furthermore, I helped with planning out our GANTT chart, and picked the tasks I felt confident I could complete.  We also discussed the things we would have to remove from the project’s MVP, such as cellular chip on pendant and digital security.  I think currently, our progress is on schedule. By next week, I want to completely outline how we initially plan to communicate between the devices (pendant, phone, ring). With this information, we can order the parts to help put us on good pace.

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Anika’s Status Report for 2/10

This week we spent our time on the proposal presentations. We prepared by working on the slide deck as a team. In addition my teammates and I also noted what specific components are needed and want to discuss with our TA to request some components/order some components online. We also want to discuss the possibility of using a flexible PCB board for our project (ring). Given that our ring is small sized, we need to be able to have some flexibility with our electronics in order to shape the board into a ring, so it can later be encased in the desired material.  Along with the ring we also need to discuss how we want to shape the pendant in order to be subtle and fit all the necessary components. Once we have a discussion about this we can begin to create the PCBs. In addition to the components, I plan to start working on the companion app framework  on Flutter and hope to have the basic framework done by the end of this week.

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Team Status Report 2/10

 

This week we presented our proposals, and got feedback that will help as we move forward with our Design Presentations. We recognize that it will be important to highlight what makes our design unique and that we should go into more detail why we have a ring/pendant system (specifically that the ring trigger can be pressed by the user in situations where they are unable to move their hands and the button on the underside of the ring can be easily pressed with the thumb using one hand.) In addition we also need to consider in more detail how we are going to test our design b/c with a safety device it’s consistency is crucial. We also need to modify our block diagram to be less high-level for the design presentation.

As we order supplies this week, we face significant risks if a necessary material for our final project has a long delivery or wait time, that we are giving us enough time to not only order the part, but ensure it will work with our implementation. We will manage these risks by ensuring we have 2 back up plans for every high risk item. This means that we either order additional materials, an extra variation of a material or have a backup design that can work without the material for extreme cases. This will most likely slightly change our costs of our original system if we eventually go with a different variation, but as of right now, nothing will change specifically.

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Olivia’s Status Report for 2/10

This week was dedicated to the presentation of our proposals. I had the opportunity to represent our team and share our ideas. To prepare, we collaboratively worked on the slide deck and ensured that all crucial points of our proposal were effectively communicated. Following our presentation, we initiated discussions on material allocation, focusing on the specifics of what to purchase, the quantities needed, and the sourcing locations for our project materials. We are poised to start placing orders and assembling the necessary components. This includes procuring additional items that are deemed fragile, given our budget allows for it. We are also considering the need for multiple iterations of the rings/pendants, estimating the required number of sets that can be accommodated within our budget. Furthermore, we are paying special attention to more expensive items, ensuring they are essential and meet our project requirements. As the lead for finalizing purchases, I am tasked with reviewing each item and consulting with our TA and team members to develop a robust plan. This plan will account for any external factors that could influence our project’s success.