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Team Status Report for 4/27

Risk Identification and Mitigation Strategies
Primary Risk Concern: Our primary concern is the OCR integration on time. This module of the project was just finished this week. Yuma still needs to integrate it into the code, taking more time.

Mitigation Measures:
Yuma will be solely focused on finishing the final integration. Siyuan and Jason will work on the final documentation, including final reports, final video, and final poster.

Project Design Updates
As of the current reporting period, there have been no modifications to the initial design of the project.

Schedule and Timeline
We are a little lagging behind the schedule. However, since we only have final integration unfinished, we should have everything done by demo day.

List all unit tests and overall system test 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.

Tests:

temperature and humidity sensor test

recomandation algorithm test

item registration test

scalling and system reliability test

usability test

scanning test

display test

Findings & Design Changes:

The design of our overall system did not have much changes. However, in the test of scanning items, we have some findings regarding OCR. We did not expect that there are many formats, sizes, and colors of expiration dates. This makes our model tranning harder than we thought. Also, we find that the choice of camera is really important. Our first camera was cheap and it does not have great image quality. Then, we purchased an expensive one, which do have great image quality but was not designed to focus for something at close distance. In the end, due to limited budget, we have to choose a camera with good image quality and can focus at close distance, but the focusing speed is slow and easily affected by shaky hands. All these reasons combined, make our OCR module does not have a satisfying scanning accuracy.

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Siyuan’s Status Report for 4/27

Accomplishments This Week

This week, I focused on enhancing System Interaction.

I successfully integrated an onscreen keyboard into our system, which now allows for a completely keyboard-free and mouse-free operation. Previously, while users could interact with the system using a touchscreen to replace the mouse, a physical keyboard was still necessary for entering textual information, such as dates. By having the onscreen keyboard, all functionalities can now be managed directly from the touchscreen, simplifying the user interface and reducing hardware requirements.

 

Project Schedule and Progress

I am on schedule, and my progress is still good.

 

Goals for the Next Week

Next week, my work will shift toward final documentation.

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Team Status Report for 4/20

Risk Identification and Mitigation Strategies
Primary Risk Concern: Our primary concern is the OCR finishing on time. This module of the project has been in the work for a while but we underestimated how long it would take for it to finish. Although this would be put as our priority for this week, Yuma still would need to integrate it into the code once its finished, taking more time.

Mitigation Measures:
Yuma will be solely focused on finishing the main module, and Jason will be solely focused on finishing the OCR.

Project Design Updates
As of the current reporting period, there have been no modifications to the initial design of the project.

Validation

For validation, the points remain from last week’s status report. One new aspect that I forgot to consider is validating our display. As of right now, the testing setup is a jumble of buttons and in order to meet the usability requirement, we hope to declutter and make the display more prettier. We will try to hit this requirement along with the other tests and metrics we hope to hit, mentioned in last week’s status report.

Schedule and Timeline
We are a little lagging behind the schedule but we do have enough complete for the final presentation and should have all of the remaining tasks done by demo day.

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Siyuan’s Status Report for 4/20

Accomplishments This Week

This week, I focused on testing of newly arrived temperature and humidity sensor. The key accomplishments include:

Completion of Temperature and Humidity Sensor Software: I finalized the software development for handling data requests from the temperature and humidity sensors.

Testing Sensor Accuracy: I conducted testing to ensure the accuracy of the temperature and humidity sensors.

Full Hardware Integration: I completed the full hardware integration of two scanner modules, since the third one’s materials are with my teammates. This integration gives one of the final products of the project. For the central module, I have the screen in my hand, but the Raspberry Pi is with my teammates, so I can’t integrate it now.

Contribution to Final Presentation Slides: In addition to the technical developments, I completed almost all of the final presentation slides on my own.

 

Project Schedule and Progress

I am on schedule, and my progress is still good.

 

Goals for the Next Week

Next week, my work will shift toward final documentation and demonstration preparation.

 

Special Question

In the past, I didn’t have much knowledge about Python. In this project, I learned how to use it and how to find libraries for ease of use and strong capabilities. In order to learn it, I read some posts in different forums. When I have some bugs, I search through Stack Overflow to find answers. Although they might not have exactly the same problem, I can still summarize solutions on my own.

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Team Status Report for 4/6

Risk Identification and Mitigation Strategies
Primary Risk Concern: Our primary concern currently is being able to integrate our modules together, especially the camera and the scanner module. This includes not only the coding part, but also physically putting them together. As the scanner will be apart from the rbpi module and connected via wire, we will have to see how we can put them together without making it difficult for our users.

Mitigation Measures:
We are able to tweak our physical design part of the scanner if needed. The wiring part can be extended or shortened if necessary. Other mitigation measures and validation methods will be discussed in Validation section.

Project Design Updates
As of the current reporting period, there have been no modifications to the initial design of the project.

Validation

For validation, our main aspect is putting the modules all together and seeing if they work as intended at the specs that we want. Specifically, we want to measure how fast our scanner system works, and how accurate the information is, and how easy it would be to fix any mistakes and log them into our system. These metrics will be validated by testing our module in a real life setting. We will setup our scanner module as well as our central module in a room, and try to do a test run of a real life scenario. This includes scanning, logging, and checking information. We will then debug any issues that may arise in the process, such as timing requirements as well as accuracy requirements.

Schedule and Timeline
We are on schedule, and hope to be done integrating by next week. We will dedicate the rest of the time on testing and validating our module.

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Siyuan’s Status Report for 4/6

Accomplishments This Week

This week, I focused on testing of newly arrived temperature and humidity sensor. The key accomplishments include:

Testing of Temperature and Humidity Sensor: Upon receiving the temperature and humidity sensors, I conducted comprehensive testing to assess their functionality with the Raspberry Pi. These tests were designed to ensure that the sensors operate accurately and reliably under various conditions, providing the data essential for our system’s environmental monitoring capabilities.

Project Schedule and Progress

I am on schedule, and my progress is still good.

 

Goals for the Next Week

Next week, I will complete the development of the software required to manage data requests from the temperature and humidity sensors. With the software development completed, the next step will be to integrate the temperature and humidity sensors into the scanner module.

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Siyuan’s Status Report for 3/30

Accomplishments This Week

This week, I focused on integration of additional sensors to further enhance the capabilities of our inventory management system. The key accomplishments include:

Further Integration of Scanner Module Software: Continued efforts were made to integrate the scanner module software more deeply within our system. This involved refining the interaction between the scanner module and other system components.

Research of New Sensors: I conducted thorough research into temperature sensors, humidity sensors. These components were selected for their potential to provide valuable environmental data, enhancing our inventory management capabilities. Following the research, orders were placed for these parts from DigiKey.

 

Project Schedule and Progress

I am on schedule, and my progress is still good.

 

Goals for the Next Week

Next week, upon the arrival of the temperature sensor and humidity sensor, I will conduct initial tests to verify their functionality and compatibility with the Raspberry Pi and our existing system components. Following successful testing, I will begin the process of integrating these sensors into the scanner module. This involves developing the necessary software.

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Team Status Report for 3/30

Risk Identification and Mitigation Strategies
Primary Risk Concern: Our primary concern currently is the OCR accuracy. Our current camera setting and training dataset are not able to provide enough OCR accuracy.

Mitigation Measures:
We are currently trying to find another camera with autofocus and wider focus range. We have ordered another camera with autofocus and 40mm to infinit focus range. Another mitigation measure could be switching to another dataset to train our OCR model.

Project Design Updates
As of the current reporting period, there have been no modifications to the initial design of the project.

Schedule and Timeline
We are not on track with our timeline. The development for the OCR algorithm detecting expiration dates has been falling behind and we haven’t been able to integrate that portion of the scanner module yet.
The updated Gantt Chart is attached below. We still have one week of slack.

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Siyuan’s Status Report for 3/23

Accomplishments This Week

This week, I focused on the software development aspects of the project. The key accomplishments include:

Scanner Module Software Integration: I successfully carried out further integration of the scanner module software, ensuring that it seamlessly interfaces with other components of our inventory management system.

Development of Photo Capture Function: In collaboration with Jason, we initiated the development of a photo capture function, aiming to capture images for OCR. Despite our efforts, we encountered technical difficulties with setting up the OpenCV environment required for the photo capture function. These challenges have temporarily hindered our progress in implementing this feature but have not impacted our overall project timeline.

 

Project Schedule and Progress

I am on schedule, and my progress is still good.

 

Goals for the Next Week

Next week, the focus will continue to be on the integration of the scanner module software with the broader system. Alongside development, I will try resolving the OpenCV challenges, and I will resume development of the photo capture function, aiming to integrate this feature into our system.

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Team Status Report for 3/23

Risk Identification and Mitigation Strategies
Primary Risk Concern: Our primary concern currently is the camera image acquisition rate. We did not expect to run into a problem where the camera is not able to stream images continuously, instead it happens at the frequency that a python function is called. Since this rate limits the amount of images we are able to acquire in a single period of time, we are not able to gather images that we may want for good classification.
Mitigation Measures:
We are currently trying to find alternative methods of acquiring images, such as a screen capture or photos being dumped to disk before we read off of it. These methods add latency, so we are also experimenting with multi-threading the main python function in hopes of getting better image acquisition performance. Another mitigation measure could be strengthening the OCR algorithm, though this is a last resort due to the nature of its complexity.
Project Design Updates
As of the current reporting period, there have been no modifications to the initial design of the project.
Schedule and Timeline
We are not on track with our timeline. The development for the OCR algorithm detecting expiration dates has been falling behind and we haven’t been able to integrate that portion of the scanner module yet.