Category: Neelansh’s Status Report

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 worked on more testing, ensuring that the system works, and also preparing for the final presentation that we had on Wednesday. This week wasn’t as much work as we had given a lot of time in the previous weeks to be at a safe position.

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

The progress is on schedule.

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

We have our final presentation next week and will spend time preparing for that and ensuring our final solution is well tested and correct in all aspects. 

List all unit tests and overall system tests carried out for experimentation of the system. List any findings and design changes made from your analysis of test results and other data obtained from the experimentation.

There weren’t any major design changes on my part, except the fact that we went from a QuadSPI implementation to a SPI implementation, as that worked for our needs.

For the tests, we carried out all the tests as described in the final presentation. This included the range test, where we held the remote camera node and the receiver 50m apart, with multiple obstacles in between, and were still able to send and receive the frames with less than 10% drops.

Another test was the battery test, where we ran the system for 24 hours and were able to continuously see it working.

Another test for my part was using the logic analyzer to see that the SPI implementation is working correctly and the bytes transferred are padded, and in the right order. This test also included integration with the FPGA and making of the entire system.

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 was not familiar with ESP32s which is one of the most important microcontrollers we are using in this project. I had to learn from youtube videos, online tutorials and websites on how to set it up and get the entire project working. I had to consult friends who are proficient in it to learn and get advice on. 

I learnt about using the IDF environment, SPI interfacing, and working with microcontrollers. My biggest learning strategy was trying to find things out from the internet or books, and being ready to ask for help and advice from my peers and mentors in the process.

We recognize that there are quite a few different methods (i.e. learning strategies) for gaining new knowledge — one doesn’t always need to take a class, or read a textbook to learn something new. Informal methods, such as watching an online video or reading a forum post are quite appropriate learning strategies for the acquisition of new knowledge.

Yes, I agree with this statement completely. I had never worked with microcontrollers in the past before, since I had always been more on the pure software side of things. However, when tasked with working on making the ESP32 act as an Access Point and writing code for the SPI interface, I had to research online forums, especially during debugging. I had to ask my teammates for help at times and ask professors and TAs about any doubts I had. These experiences are valuable and make me understand the importance of all different resources available to learn and gain knowledge from.

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). 

I worked on developing the SPI interface and ensuring it works correctly. I then worked on adding more features to the data such as adding padding and making it 4 byte aligned to allow for easier decoding on the FPGA end. I then worked on manual testing in Schenley Park with my teammates and did analysis on data we collected.

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

It is on schedule.

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

I will be working on testing and making the entire 6 camera nodes system work well within our constraints. We also need to prepare and work for the presentation and the final 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 on finalizing everything for the demo, since our demo was on Wednesday for us. I developed and tested the ESP32 receiver node and worked with my teammates to allow for transmission from not just one ESP32, but from multiple different ESP32s acting as STA’s to one single ESP32, acting as an AP. 

I then worked on the one part I was unable to display in the demo, the SPI interface. I developed the entire SPI interface and then tested it via Oscilloscopes and Arduinos to ensure that the entire transmission via the interface was working, and that we were sending the correct byte streams.

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

I am on schedule.

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

Next week I plan on integrating these two parts : receiving data from multiple streams, and then sending it to the FPGA via the SPI interface. After that I would work with my teammates to start building a module and then start testing the entire system.

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?  

For the verification of my work, I plan on conducting exhaustive tests to measure the correctness and efficiency of my system.

I am currently able to send basic data from one ESP32 to the other and receive it correctly with 100% correctness (no packet drops). 

I plan on sending real time image data (to simulate real world use cases) from multiple ESP32s acting as STA (remote node), to one single ESP32 acting as the AP (receiver node), with multiple data access points. I would then test this with multiple ESP32s sending data at a single point of time to satisfy the use case requirements set in the earlier stages of having at least 6 different camera nodes being able to transmit data simultaneously. 

Apart from this, I would also test the SPI interface with oscilloscopes to ensure that all the 6 different camera streams are coming in correctly. This would also include testing in real life scenarios, with variations in the distance between the sender and receiver (10m, 20m, 30m, … until failure), and also with varying number of objects in between them to try and recreate the camping site. I will go to Schenley park and conduct my tests there to ensure that the trees or the foliage does not cause my system to fail. Lastly, I would run the entire system for hours at stretch (try to find the breaking point), and use python scripts to continuously test for correctness and ensure that the packet losses are within the limits set earlier.  

 

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).

I worked on the SPI interface and setting everything up, including data access points on the receiver ESP32 node, setting up the SPI interface and then transmitting data through it, ensuring that the data is not just garbled bytes but actual legitimate data, and then worked on ensuring the entire system works together as one module. This involved setting everything up together, using oscilloscopes to measure the data being transmitted via the SPI interface, and then also sending and receiving data from multiple ESP32s.

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

It is on schedule.

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

Next week I plan on doing the interim demo, and working with my teammates on getting their components ready for a final test, and then start joining the individual components built by each of us together.

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 was a long one. I worked on building the QuadSPI interface for transmitting data from the receiver ESP32 to the lattice ECP5 FPGA. This involved understanding the firmware of the FPGA to understand how to set up the quad data transfer points and send bits. I also had to write code to set up the SPI on the ESP32 after reading and understanding the entire manual. I had to experiment with the clock speed, configure the Quad SPI mode based on the clock polarity and clock phase that would match the FPGA (slave device). All these tasks involved reading, writing code, and extensive debugging. I also attended the ethics seminar and actively contributed to the discussion.

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

The project is on schedule.

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

Next week, I plan on integrating the QuadSPI interface with the ESP32 and start receiving data on the ESP32, serializing it, and then transmitting it to the connected FPGA to simulate real world conditions. 

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 setting up the ESP32 data access points and ensuring that the code I have written in the IDF environment works. This included connecting an ESP32 to my computer, setting up the entire toolchain, figuring out the necessary dependencies and writing code to set up the data access points on the ESP32. 

After that, I started to transfer data. At first I wrote code to check if I can open a simple webpage saying “Hello World” based on some online tutorials, and after that I started sending more and more data. I tried to measure the data transfer rate of the ESP32 by sending in large amounts of data in the range 65535 bytes and upwards since that would be what we will be sending in the final product.

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

The project is still on schedule.

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

For the next week, I plan on finishing up the receiver module by setting up the data access points completely and finding the thresholds of the data transfer rate, also work on other aspects of the project such as the drivers and encoders needed to transfer the data to the FPGA on the receiver node.

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).

 Over the past week, I started working with the ESP32, and worked on writing code to be able to receive data from my personal computer. I tried sending random bits and then other values, trying to emulate the real world situation of sending compressed frames and then receiving and serializing them. I was able to successfully receive the transmitted data and ensure that the data frames lost were within the limit specified in our requirements ( <10%). I also started reading on other current architecture and solutions present, and read a few research papers and websites which related to fast data transmission and receiving via wireless networks (especially ESP32s). 

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

We are on schedule and things are going as per plan. 

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

In the coming week, I plan on developing the receiver node’s physical architecture with my partners, and also work on completing my code, along with extensive real world testing to ensure adequate transmission and receiving of data as per the requirements set in our design. Apart from this, I would also be working on developing a detailed testing plan with the exact metrics, and start initial testing.

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 past week I worked with my teammates on perfecting the design presentation and solidifying our use case. We then worked on doing more calculations and research on finalizing the hardware and software stack to be used.

I have started working on developing the code for the receiver node (the ESP32 on the receiver node which will then transmit the received data frames to the FPGA). I have finalized the tool chain setup and have figured out how the complete implementation will work. The ESP32 Wifi-Setup has also been completed and I am now working on actually transmitting the data and completing the initial physical hardware setup. I also started testing the code for the JPEG decompression algorithm in C, which will then be used by my teammates to convert into System Verilog and apply on the FPGA. Me and Michael have already tested on a few test images, and the code does seem to work well, giving us a compression ratio of about 5.75:1, which is good enough for our needs. 

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

We are currently on schedule and all things are on track. If any problems occur, we plan on using the mitigation strategies discussed in our proposal and design presentations. 

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

In the next week, I will be working on writing the JPEG Buffer which will store the incoming data frames from all the remote camera nodes. I will also be working with my teammates on helping them with their parts and ensuring overall progress of the project. 

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 was not a lot of physical work, but more so about planning and ideating. We finalized the components we need, and started preparing for the design presentation
next week. I am working on the ESP32 on the receiver node, and consequently spent my time going over data sheets and doing mathematical calculations to finalize the hardware necessary. I also worked on researching the existing tool chains present and how they can be incorporated into our solution.
I then spent time making a basic timeline for my own part, and designing the initial structure of the receiver node, along with the coding components. I spent time writing basic code for the decoding part on the receiver node, and spent time researching online for existing solutions, so I could differentiate ours from them and get the best parts from the existing ones.
I and my teammates also met Professor Tamal and Jason, our TA this week and finalized our plans for the upcoming few weeks.
We also spent time figuring out what products to order for an initial order so that we can start testing, and ended up placing an order for a few items.

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

We are currently on schedule and are waiting for the products to come so that we can start testing.

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

For next week, we plan on giving the design presentation on either Monday or
Wednesday, and also will be doing basic testing on initial products, to be able to give a better representation of what our final product is going to look like. I will also be getting the Tool chain setup finalized and ready.

This was the first week after initial team selection and project ideation. We finalized what we will be creating over the course of the semester, and divided up tasks based on each team member’s interests and proficiency. I will be managing more of the software stack, and handling the ESP32 on the receiver node. 

 

My major role will be to ensure that all the data being transmitted from the 6 camera nodes is received appropriately on the receiver, and is then transmitted in the correct format to the FPGA for further processing. 

 

A major task for this week was the Proposal Presentation. I was the speaker, and therefore had to rehearse and plan the presentation with my teammates. I believe the presentation went well, as per the feedback received from my peers and the instructors. There are no images that we took during the presentation, however the proposal presentation slides have been uploaded to the website for reference.

 

Me and my teammates met multiple times over the course of the previous week to finalize the slides and rehearse multiple times before going into the presentation. Apart from that, I timed myself and rehearsed solo by recording myself, talking into the mirror, and planning out exactly what I would be saying.  

 

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

 

We are currently on schedule and there are no major delays as of yet.

 

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

 

In the coming week, we plan to do more research into finalizing our use case, and consequently finalizing the hardware specifications we require for fulfilling our goals. This will involve multiple iterations of ideas and selection of suitable hardware, based on both our budget and intended use. I and my teammates will also do mathematical calculations and run simulations (maybe try out different FPGAs, monitor displays, microcontrollers, etc.), over the course of the week to finalize the hardware specifications we need, and then curate a list of all the products we would require.