test post heehee
Cora’s Status Report for 2/8/2025
This week I focused on researching the browser extension. The browser extension is going to be used in order to allow the user to easily interact with our project and give them an intuitive UI to view their data and make changes such as toggle options for their camera being on/off and whether sound notifications are on/off.
I researched which browser would be best to make our extension for. I came to the conclusion that Google Chrome would be the best because of the thorough documentation that’s available, the APIs that Google provides, and its straight-forward development process. I researched what type of permissions we will need to ask the user for since the user being aware of what they’re installing is important to us. I wanted to establish the most minimally invasive permissions necessary so we’re not asking for more than what we need and compromise the user’s security. I established we will need at least the following Chrome permissions: audio (for audio notifications), notifications (for on-screen alerts), activeTab, and scripting (in order to adjust brightness of screen). These permissions will be listed in the manifest.json file which is part of the family of files that make up the extension. Note that the user must accept to all these permissions at installation time even if they later choose to disable related features. Otherwise, some permissions can be declared “optional” which is something I would like to discuss with my team to see if this makes more sense for our project.
My progress is on schedule for this week. Next week I hope to have a prototype extension ready in order to test out the basic infrastructure of our extension. I also want to begin with setting up the RasPi hosted server.
Kaitlyn’s Status Report for 2/8/2025
This week, I presented our Project Proposal to the other capstone teams and faculty. I spent ~2 hours preparing for the presentation to ensure we met all the needed requirements in the slide show, and to ensure that I could spend my time interacting with the audience instead of reading just off the slides. After presenting the proposal, I spent the rest of the week doing research into different sensors we could use in the chair. I was able to narrow it down to two types of sensors: Load Cells and Flexible Force Sensors. After putting some more thought into the overall integration, I think that using flexible force sensors (image of circuit I would need below) might be better in the long run to meet the user requirements of not impeding the user during their work, as they will not be as obtrusive on the chair. While I would need an opamp and capacitors for this circuit, I think the wiring could be done under the chair to be unobtrusive. As well, those parts are very cheap and easy to replace. Since we are using the RasPi, I also researched possible ADC converter modules for the RasPi in order to digitize the voltage inputs into the Pi. I hope this upcoming Monday to finish talking through this design choice with the team and order the parts necessary to begin creating a barebones pressure mat and testing it.
My progress is on schedule. This week, I wanted to complete research into parts for the pressure sensors so they could be ordered on Monday when our team next meets.
In the next week, I hope to create a much more in depth design of the chairs sensors. I hope to create a document that details exactly how the pressure sensors will be connected to the raspberry pi, and begin working on the code in order to create the averages for weight distribution on the chair.