Category: Twain’s Status Reports

Between last and this status report, I helped with the comfortability survey. I also started to work on the final presentation poster and the final report.

My progress is on schedule. Next week, I will finish the final design report and poster before they are due.

Between last and this status report, we got our final PCB layout, and I put solder paste onto the board and then used the pick and place machine to put all of the small pieces onto the board, as seen in the last attached picture. Additionally, I worked on the final presentation.

My progress is on schedule. Next week, I hope to finalize the watch and work on the final design report and poster.

Through this project, I have found myself needing to learn how to program in Rust better than I could before, and I used the Rust documentation and my friends who know Rust to learn it better. I learned more about designing hardware systems, which was mostly through my teammates, as well as some online resources. I also learned how to use the pick and place machine just this past week, which I figured out through the help of my teammates and a bit of experimentation. Throughout this project, I made much use of my human resources, ie friends of mine who had more experience than I did with the various aspects of my project, as well as online resources such as forums and videos online.

Between last and this status report, I helped with attaching more pieces to the circuit board, and I also soldered together resistors to be fine tuned for our energy harvesting purposes.

My progress is on schedule.

Next week, I hope to help with the firmware more.

Between last and this status report, I worked on the PCB and attached all of the parts that we had that were needed for the PCB.

My progress is on schedule.

Next week, I hope to put in orders for more parts and start to work on more of the mechanical aspects of the watch.

Between last and this status report, I helped create the design report, writing several sections and editing others to reach the correct length requirements and for clarity. Additionally, I entered more items into the order form for the parts we have yet to make.

My progress is on schedule.

Next week, I hope to put in the order for the PCB and continue working on the energy harvesting.

This week, I created a prototype for the piezoelectric energy harvesting. I cut one of the pieces of spring steel into one inch strips, prepped the surface, and attached three of the piezo tiles to the surface at locations suggested by the paper, leaving room to attach other tiles at the angles suggested to have more voltage output upon flexion. I then hooked each tile up to an oscilloscope and studied the outputs upon flexing the spring steel small amounts at the bend angles that would be likely to be seen when wearing the watch. Additionally, I began to figure out how to attach the watch straps together so that they can be reformed for our purposes.

My progress is on schedule, as this week was dedicated to creating a prototype of the energy harvesting.

In the next week, I hope to test this prototype more and to help Carson implement the other form of energy harvesting that we are looking into.

This week, I spent significant time working on the slideshow presentation for the design presentation. I also helped create the list of parts we needed to order, and then submitted all of the ordering paperwork and dealt with the issues that arose in the order. Additionally, I helped Gary with the firmware for the GPS, looking at Rust crates for parsing NMEA 0183.

My progress is on schedule, assuming that the parts needed to test the energy harvesting show up quickly enough for me to get to prototyping, which is my main task for next week. I will need to figure out how to cut the metal, make it safe to wear, and attach it to the wristwatch strap and the piezo tiles to the metal.

This week, I gave the project proposal talk on Wednesday. I helped my teammates finalize a list of materials that we would need to purchase for this project, and additionally helped figure out which exact items we would need and where we could purchase them from. I looked into a paper to help figure out how to get energy harvesting working, and was able to figure out a better plan of action in terms of materials to buy and sources to look into.

My progress is slightly behind schedule; I didn’t realize that I wasn’t going to be able to order parts on Friday, and we were hoping to put in an order for the sheet metal and piezo elements, at least, by the end of this week. However, we should be able to get that done this week, and shipping should take a short enough amount of time that it should not be a huge detriment.

In the next week, I intend to help Gary with getting the minimal firmware done for the project. Depending on shipping time for our parts, I will also start to work with figuring out how to mount the piezo tiles on the metal band, and the metal band on the wristwatch strap.