Carnegie Mellon ECE Capstone, Spring 2025 - Abigael O'Donnell, Emma Hoffman, Maddie Burroughs
The start of my week was focused on preparing to present our design review, which happened Monday and (I think) went well! Since then I have been pretty sick, but was able to – thanks to a cocktail of basically every over-the-counter cold medicine known …
This week I spent time figuring out how to set up the Raspberry Pi. I got the Pi from the ECE inventory but ran into a roadblock when I realized that I needed to upload and customize the OS on the raspberry pi, which required …
This week, I have been away from campus (2/12-2/16) for the UAA conference championships with the swim and dive team. Originally my plan was to set up the underwater camera this week, with next week being the implementation of additional sensors. However, as the parts we ordered at the end of last week did not come in until midweek after I had already left, I have switched my schedule to combine the setting up of the underwater camera and the sensor implementation for next week as I believe that both of the parts will be in then. Over this past week, I spent some time researching different ML models that our group could use to implement the color classification algorithm such as SVM and KNN. I read several articles that described the process of classifying different colors that I believe I can adapt into different categories of coral health. I believe that I am still on schedule as I will be able to set up the camera and sensors next week and I am getting an early start on exploring the ML process.
This week, most of my time was spent creating and preparing to present our design slidedeck. Abie and Emma have been at a swim meet since Tuesday, so I met with Prof Kim on Wednesday and together we refined some details of our design, specifically …
This week our team spent most of our time preparing for the design presentation next week. This involved developing our slidedeck, but, in doing so, also meant that most of our time was spent continuing to research materials and components to order. For the purpose …
This week, I worked on finding the materials needed to build the boat. I found a tutorial video of someone using waterproof sealant, window mesh, and foam board to make the boat. He put the foam board together with the sealant to form the boat shape. Then, he covered the boat with more sealant and window mesh to make it even more water tight. I’m planning on using an exacto knife to cut out pieces of the foam board and put it together using the sealant.
We wanted to make a custom boat because we weren’t sure how the Z-direction movement will work yet and how big this system will be. We also wanted to have room for our electronics on the boat. I found appropriate items to order to build the boat and put them in a chart we made that tracks our spending and ordering.
I also worked on the slides for the design review. I did the recap of the use case requirements and project slide, and the testing and validation slides. For testing, I realized that we can adjust the speed of the motors if needed because the motor driver can change the rotational speed of the propeller blades.
I am competing for CMU at the swim team’s conference championship meet this week. We left on Tuesday (2/11) and we do not return to campus until Sunday (2/16). This means I will not be able to test the Raspberry Pi and camera until next week. Despite this, I am still on schedule according to the Gantt chart since I was not supposed to be testing until next week. On Sunday, I am planning to make a circuit diagram of the electronic system so far. The diagram will show the connection between the motor, the motor driver, and the Raspberry Pi. It also will show the connection between the camera and the Raspberry Pi and how we are powering the Raspberry Pi. I am not seeing any noticeable risks at the moment with my section of the project.
This week I looked into the camera for our project and filled out the order form for our team. Originally, I was planning on adapting a GoPro that I already have to use underwater as they can be used to livestream video. However, in Emma’s …
This week, most of my capstone project time was spent designing the mechanism for raising and lowering the underwater component from the boat base. Currently, I’m leaning towards using a stepper motor-driven spool. The mechanism will also have a level wind mechanism, which will make …
The majority of our time this week was spent finalizing and rehearsing the proposal presentation (which Abie killed it presenting!)
Otherwise, we’ve spent some time individually considering the subcomponents that we’re focusing on first. Because we had yet to finalize our microprocessor and camera module(s), we came together near the end of the week to discuss the needs and limitations that we’d each determined for our subcomponents.
Based on our discussions about data transmission and power supply needs, we determined that the most likely microcontroller would be the Raspberry Pi 5th generation – this part is out of stock in ECE, however, we can reserve the 4th generation, so we’ve put in a request of this part in order to begin working. We plan to discuss in the next two weeks whether we feel the 5th generation is necessary to purchase, or if the 4th meets our needs.
Additionally, we spent time discussing which camera to purchase. We also talked about potentially getting the Sony AI camera but had concerns that autonomous adjustments would negatively affect our map recreation and algorithms. So, we decided to go lower-tech (while still prioritizing resolution and FPS) and plan to purchase the Standard Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3.
Our next priority will be finalizing the design of the boat component, specifically choosing the base so that we have more information about geometry and size.
This week I investigated how to connect a microcontroller to a laptop wirelessly. The requirements for this connection include streaming live video and transmitting a signal from a keyboard press. I discovered that bluetooth would not be suitable for our needs because bluetooth does not …