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Rohit’s Status Report – 4/12/2025

This week I completed the frontend implementation of our GlassMate web application. I finalized all the UI components including the calendar view, diary entry display, and user settings interface. I also collaborated with Will on 3D printing the casings for all our hardware components, which involved learning CAD design and working with the 3D printer to create properly sized housings for the Arducam.

A significant achievement was implementing the metadata addition functionality for images. This system extracts GPS coordinates from captured images and enhances them with location names using the Google Maps API integration we previously developed. I ensured this metadata is properly stored and associated with each image in our database.

I also worked closely with Dhruv to connect the frontend with the backend pipeline he was developing. We’ve successfully established the connection so that when the camera captures an image, it’s automatically processed and appears in the web interface with the proper metadata and location information. The system now displays captured images in the calendar view and generates diary entries that incorporate the location data.

I’m slightly behind schedule on some aspects of the integration. While the frontend components are largely complete, there’s still work to be done on ensuring communication between all parts of the system. We should have begun more comprehensive testing by now, but the challenges with the GPS module and hardware integration have delayed this phase.

For the coming week, I’ll focus on completing the final integration of the frontend with the manual trigger button that Will has implemented. I will also start testing of the entire pipeline from image capture to web display.

In terms of verification, I’ll be testing the frontend’s response to various image capture scenarios and ensuring that metadata is correctly displayed in the interface. I’ll also conduct usability testing to identify any UX issues before the final demo.

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William’s Status Report 4/12/2025

Accomplishments This Week

  • 3D printed the housing for the ARDUCAM
  • Soldered and tested the GPS module, however, it didn’t work as well as expected. Thus, we will be reverting back to the Blues Notecard. I was able to integrate the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller onto the Blues Notecard.
  • Manual Trigger with testing button.

Reflection on Schedule

  • Slightly behind schedule. However, with completely focusing on the integration aspect of the flow, I still believe that we will be able to get everything done well before the demo deadline.

Plans For Next Week:

  • Fully integrate entire pipeline with manual trigger
  • Housing for the “pocket” module, will require more 3D printing and measuring
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Team Status Report – 4/12/2025

Accomplishments this week:
This week, Rohit built and finished the frontend. Rohit and Will also worked on 3D printed the casing for all our parts. This involved learning how to do CAD as well as 3D printing. Rohit also made a function to be able to add metadata to images. Will also worked on the manual button and was able to solder it. We are now working on the manual button integration. In addition, Will worked on the location feature and realized that our new GPS module was not good enough. He is now reverting back to using the Blue’s Notecard for location. Dhruv worked on integrating the entire pipeline together. He was able to connect the backend camera capture mechanism to the frontend code. There is now a working pipeline from camera capture to displaying the summary on the frontend. As a group we are slightly behind schedule but we made significant progress recently and are almost ready to test. Our plans for next week are to finish the pipeline and start testing.

To validate our pipeline. We will initiate a camera capture, and verify throughout the pipeline. We will verify the location data, metadata, as well as functionality on the webpage. We will then check that summaries are actually reflective of a user’s day. We will test by each using the product for a day and seeing how useful it really is. Then, we will adjust prompt and models as needed.

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Dhruv Status Report – 4/12/2025

Accomplishments this week:
This week I focused on connecting the backend pipeline to the to the frontend. This involved a lot of effort in changing the structure of the code to match the frontend. We know have a working calendar view with configurable settings and generated diary entries. Now, whenever a picture is taken, it dynamically gets added to the website. In addition to this, Will and I worked on location. We realized the GPS is not great so we are going back to using the Blue’s Notecard. We also all 3D printed the casing for our parts.

Reflection on schedule:
I need to focus on helping integrate all the parts together and start testing. We are behind the schedule as we should have started testing.

Plans for next week:
Finish entire pipeline and start testing.

Verification Plans:
To verify that my part works as expected. I have built a simulator to simulate location changes using my arrow keys. I am using this to simulate the entire pipeline of picture taking and website updates. So far, it is working correctly. Once, we have the location working, we will verify location by walked certain distances and comparing coordinates with our phone. We will make sure it is within the 100 meter radius. We have already tested camera capture and network connectivity.

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Team Status Report – 3/29/25

General Accomplishments From Team

This week on the hardware side we implemented MQTT-based communication between Raspberry Pi Pico and server. Along with this, we also automated image capture system working with Arducam. Additionally, the Blues Notecard can now send location data via HTTP, but with accuracy issues.

On the software side, we completed the user auth system with login/registration. We also were able to integrate Google Maps API to convert coordinates to place names which greatly enhanced the diary view entries. We are in progress of connecting this with the image pipeline from capture to diary entry generation.

Most Significant Risks That Could Jeopardize Success of the Project

Location Accuracy: Blues Notecard providing unreliable location data and shutting down after two communications. Solution: Ordering replacement GPS module with UART interface.

Integration Challenges: Minimizing with standardized MQTT communication protocol between components.

Testing: Four weeks until final demo so we are prioritizing integration testing early.

Changes made to the existing design of the system

We are planning to replace the Blues Notecard with dedicated GPS module for better accuracy.

We are also switching from serial communication to MQTT broker architecture for improved reliability in location change to capture pipeline.

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Dhruvs status report 3/29

Accomplishments this week:
This week I made a lot of progress. I worked on the raspberry pi and got the camera working and automated picture taking. We ran into many issues with trying to communicate with the pico and connecting the blues to the pico. Therefore, I decided to set up a Hive broker and use MQTT to send images and receive commands. I also connected this to my existing application and now whenever i am stationary in a new location for 10 seconds, it publishes a capture command to Hive. The pico is subscribed to the command topic and initiates a picture capture. After the image is taken, it publishes it to an image topic. My laptop is subscribed to this topic and downloads the image to a local directory. This is then connected to the backend pipeline to summarize and create a diary. Will and I also got the blue’s notecard set up and can now send us location data based off a command.

Reflection on Schedule:
I am ahead of schedule and have mainly finished all my parts.

Plans for next week:
Since I have done a lot of the early work on my part, I will continue working on the hardware. We will focus on automating location next and then full integration.

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William’s Status Report for 3/29/2025

Accomplishments This Week:

This week, I continued working on the micro-controller development of the hardware parts. We ran into a few issues with the automation aspect of capturing image to the server receiving the image serially through the Python library PySerial. Thus, we switched into MQTT transmission between the PICO captured image and the local server running on our laptop. The pipeline between the captured image and our local server host now works.

In regards to the location module of the system with the Blues Notecard, it is able to communicate the coordinates between the module and the local server via HTTP. However, the automation has a little bit of issues since it can only communicate twice then the device shuts down for some reason.  In addition, the location seem a little bit far from our expectations. Thus, I requested to replace the module with GPS tracker here.

According to some research, it seems a lot more accurate than the Blues Notecard and can provide real-time configuration of the location. This should be fairly easy to configure via UART, so we plan on trying to switch this component for the location aspect of the project. It should be a pretty easy transition here.

Reflection on Schedule:

I think that considering four weeks left till the final demo, our group is still on track to finish by the final demo. The location module seems intuitive to complete, so we will focus on integration and design for the remaining weeks.

Plans for Next Week:

We will be spending some time on the interim demo. In addition, we will also order another GPS device for our location and integration + location will be our main focus for the week.

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Rohit’s Status Report – 3/29/2025

This week I made more progress on the frontend components. I successfully implemented the user auth system, which now allow users to register new accounts and login securely. This includes all the necessary validation, password hashing, and session management. The login and registration pages are now fully functional.

I also integrated the Google Maps API with our vision model. This allows us to extract the latitude and longitude metadata from the captured images and uses the Google Maps Places API to identify nearby points of interest. The system can now automatically generate captions that include recognizable location names instead of just coordinates or addresses to help make the diary entries much more readable for users. As a result, I refined the daily summary view to incorporate these location names into the timeline visualization. When a user views their daily log, they can now see their chronological list of visits with the actual place names.

I am currently on schedule with the web app development. The auth system was completed earlier than expected and the Google Maps API integration was a planned feature that I was able to implement without major obstacles.

Next week, I plan on completed the settings interface that allows users to configure the capture prefs and continue enhancing/adding features to the front end.

As Will and Dhurv make progress with the Blues Notecard and GPS functionality. I’ll prepare to integrate the location data coming from the actual Arducam images.

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Rohit’s Status Report – 3/22/2025

Following the team’s decision to shift away from AWS, I refactored the Django backend to use SQLite for local database storage instead of the previously planned AWS RDS. I also modified the image storage system to use the local filesystem rather than S3 buckets, implementing a directory structure that organizes images by user ID and capture date.

Additionally, I worked on implementing the server-side components that will receive and process the image data from the Raspberry Pi Pico. Since Dhruv successfully established serial communication between the laptop and the Pico, I created the necessary endpoints to receive this data and integrated it with our local storage solution. I built a simple webhook listener that can accept the camera captures and trigger the necessary processing.

I also made significant progress on the user interface components. I completed the implementation of the calendar view with proper highlighting for days that contain captures, and refined the daily summary view to display images in chronological order. I added location visualization using a local map implementation that doesn’t rely on cloud services.

For the summary generation component, I researched and implemented a solution using a locally deployable LLM instead of the OpenAI API. I tested several options and found that a quantized version of Llama-3 can run on our development machines with acceptable performance for generating the diary summaries based on image metadata and location information.

I am currently on schedule with the web application development, despite the pivot away from AWS. The local development approach actually simplified some aspects of our implementation, removing dependencies on cloud configuration and allowing for faster iteration. The core functionality of the web interface is now working in our local environment, which aligns with our timeline.

Next week, I will focus on integrating with the hardware components as they become available. I plan to complete the communication layer that will receive images from the Pico once Dhruv transitions the serial connection to MQTT. Additionally, I’ll try to implement the location data processing system that will work with the GPS coordinates from the Blues Notecard that William is setting up.

Overall, the shift to local development hasn’t impacted our schedule significantly, and I remain confident that we can deliver a functional proof of concept on time.

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status report march 22nd – dhruv

Accomplishments this week:
This week I did a lot of work on the hardware software integration of our project. First, I worked on being able to send a signal to the raspberry pi pico from my laptop. I was able to do this through a serial connection. In the future, I want to be able to do this through MQTT. Then, William and I were able to work on the arducam. Will was able to connect the arducam to the raspberry pi pico. Then we worked together and read through the docs and were able to capture an image through the arducam. Overall, good progress was made!

Reflection on Schedule:
I am ahead of schedule now and have finished a large portion of the early developments of my part for the software back-end and begun working on the hardware software integration.

Plans for next week:
Since I have done a lot of the early work on my part, I will continue working on the hardware. I will be trying to set up MQTT and also sending GPS coordinates.