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Team Status Report for 4/12/25

What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project? How are these risks being managed? What contingency plans are ready? 

The most significant risk at this point would probably be in getting the motors to work, since the functionality of our entire system relies on our motors being able to work on command and actually vending snacks when needed. Currently, we’re having trouble getting all 6 motors to work in parallel; the max we’ve been able to control all together is 3 motors. We’re dealing with this road block by putting all our efforts this week in getting the motors to work. We’re thinking of buying more motor drivers in case we end up burning out  the ones we currently have and also potentially purchasing a motor shield, which is something we realized could be a better option to use. We also are working on getting our new PIR sensor up and running, since we only made the new sensor change and got it in late last week.

Were any changes made to the existing design of the system (requirements, block diagram, system spec, etc)? Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward? 

No notable changes were made in the design of the system.

Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred. This is also the place to put some photos of your progress or to brag about a component you got working.

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Ashira’s Status Report for 4/12/25

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

This week, I mainly focused on getting the speaker and motors to work. I started working on debugging the speaker system, picking up on where David and Anna had left off earlier and checked all the connections between wires, as well as the code and packages which were in the environment. With Anna’s help, we were able to clean up some of the connections between the RPi and speaker bonnet, which in the end is what seemed to help up us get the speakers working. I then moved onto developing the code to get the speaker to play sounds on command, since that is what our system will need to do. Eventually, all we needed to end up doing is downloading pygame and using their libraries to play .mp3 sounds. However, we ran into a bug with the RPi config file, which prevented the RPi from producing sound when the pygame code was run. We eventually realized that our config file was missing a line of code which was what was responsible for actually enabling audio output on the RPi. We still need to integrate this with the rest of our code, but we decided that getting all the motors to work would be the priority at this point.  Once we got this working, I spent the remaining time working on helping David debug the motors. I worked with Anna to rewire the motors on the breadboards to see ach connection more clearly, but after connecting the motors, and running our code which we had previously been able to use to spin two motors, none of them ended up working anymore. I’m wondering if it might be a result of fault connections or motors drivers entirely, since we’ve been having lots of issues with these motors drivers specifically. We have yet to finish debugging, but once this functionality is working, all we’ll need to do is integrate and we should be good to go in terms of our MVP functionality.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule? 

My progress is on schedule with our original Gantt chart we made.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This upcoming week, my focus will be on getting all 6 of the motors to work during the first half of the week and then hopefully integration during the second half.

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Ashira’s Status Report for 3/29/25

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

This week, I mainly focused on finalizing some parts of the enclosure; namely, finishing the manufacturing/assembly of the front panel window, as well as getting the springs we’ll be using to dispense the snacks from the machine to attach to the springs. This mainly consisted of me working in CAD again to design these mounts, laser cut everything, and attach them to the springs and motors. Right now, rotational movement from the motors is not being translated well to the springs. There’s some jitter that occurs when the springs begin to turn, which I’m assuming is a result of not having the mounts coupled tightly enough to the motor shaft, something I plan on fixing later on. I also assisted in attempting to debug the speakers with David and Anna, since the initial tutorial we referenced to set the speaker up ended up not working for us. I tried to look at other websites and blogs for possible fixes, but unfortunately none of them ended up helping us get the components working. 

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule? 

My progress is on schedule with our original Gantt chart we made.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This upcoming week, my focus will probably be on integrating all the parts into the gui again, and possibly further finalizing code. I’ll also put some more effort into trying to debug the speakers again and potentially also help bring up the new PIR sensor we plan on replacing our ultrasonic sensor with. 

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Team Status Report for 3/22/25

What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project? How are these risks being managed? What contingency plans are ready? 

The most significant risk at this point would probably be in bringing up the rest of the peripherals and integrating it with the rest of the system. It took us some time to debug the motors and LED strip, as well as integrate that code with the UI, so we anticipate having similar challenges with the speaker and proximity sensor. However, since the GUI and enclosure design of our project is pretty much finished, we will have much more of a combined focus on getting the peripherals to work this week than we did in previous weeks in an attempt to offload the possibility of having to debug in later weeks. We will also need to time ourselves to make sure that we have enough time to test our system as well.

Were any changes made to the existing design of the system (requirements, block diagram, system spec, etc)? Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward? 

No notable changes were made in the design of the system.

Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred. This is also the place to put some photos of your progress or to brag about a component you got working.

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Ashira’s Status Report for 3/22/25

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

This week, I focused largely on getting the peripheral components to work + integration between parts. More specifically, I worked on helping David debug the motor driver circuit + code so that we could control the motors with the RPi. This consisted of looking through tutorials, as well as other existing projects which had also incorporated the same components we were using to try and see what the problem in our circuit could be. I also spent lots of time measuring voltages and currents across the circuit to make sure they were what we expected them to be.  In the end, the problem seemed to end up being incorrect motor driver step settings and also not having the GPIO output step pins oscillate between high and low at a high enough frequency. I was  able to extend this control to 2 motors, but since we ended up burning out some of our motor drivers in the debugging process, we’ll have to wait until our new motor drivers come in before attempting to integrate all 6 motors together. I also helped out Anna with integration between the LED and GUI – more specifically, figuring out how to configure the python environment we made for our LED strip functionality to work with the GUI libraries we were using. Since neither of us had super extensive experience in using python environments, we relied on forums to help us debug. In the end, we were able to begin integrating our existing motor and LED control code with our UI. 

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule? 

My progress is on schedule with our original Gantt chart we made.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This upcoming week, my focus will probably be on helping to get the rest of the peripherals (sensors + speakers) up and running. I will also try to clean up some of the motor control code + extend the functionality to 6 motors so that when the new motor drivers come in, integrating those will be a lot easier.  I also need to laser cut the clear window on our front panel and get that attached, although I don’t anticipate it taking a long time. I was also planning on laser cutting some motor attachments to make it easier to connect the springs to the actual motor. 

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Ashira’s Status Report for 3/15/25

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

This week, I mainly focused on manufacturing and assembly of the vending machine enclosure, as well as finishing up the ethics assignment. Because our schedule for manufacturing was pushed back by a week into our initially planned assembly time, we had to redistribute some of our efforts to make sure that both jobs were finished by the end of the week, which we did successfully. With the help of David and Anna, we were able to laser cut all the pieces of the enclosure and assemble almost everything as well (shown below), with the exception of the dispenser springs and front panel, which we’ll install later on, when development for all the peripherals are finished and components can be mounted. I also spent some time helping David with debugging his schematic and code to troubleshoot the motor control. Other than that, I also spent some time this week working on the ethics assignment that was due on Wednesday.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule? 

My progress was behind coming into the week due to delays in manufacturing, but I was able to catch up and finish almost all the manufacturing an assembly this week.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

Since the mechanical end of the project is basically complete, this next week, my main focus will be in helping out with peripheral control, namely, getting the motors to work as needed, as well as bringing up speaker, LED, and sensor functionality. It might also be valuable to make an attempt at integration with the GUI as well, but the priority will mainly be implementing the basic functionality first.

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Team Status Report for 3/8/25

What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project? How are these risks being managed? What contingency plans are ready? 

The most significant risks as of now are getting the manufacturing and assembly of the enclosure finished by this week. Our manufacturing timeline had to get pushed back by one week, since we had some road bumps relating to material sourcing and selection last week, so we will put most of our effort this week into laser cutting and assembling everything to get back on track with the original deadline by next week. On the software + electrical sides, we were able to bootload the RPi and get it up and working, and in an effort to support the mechanical side of things more this week, we were able to finish the general layout of our GUI ahead of schedule. We had also originally dedicated some effort to submitting purchasing requests this week, but since we were also able to get that done earlier, we’re able to consolidate more efforts towards manufacturing as well.

Were any changes made to the existing design of the system (requirements, block diagram, system spec, etc)? Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward? 

Nothing significant was changed in our design; however, there were some small size changes made to our CAD enclosure – namely, making the dimensions a little smaller in an effort to reduce unused space.

Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred. This is also the place to put some photos of your progress or to brag about a component you got working. 

A was written by Ashira, B was written by David, and C was written by Anna.

Please write a paragraph or two describing how the product solution you are designing will meet a specified need…

Part A: … with consideration of global factors. Global factors are world-wide contexts and factors, rather than only local ones. They do not necessarily represent geographic concerns. Global factors do not need to concern every single person in the entire world. Rather, these factors affect people outside of Pittsburgh, or those who are not in an academic environment, or those who are not technologically savvy, etc.

Our vending machine’s design considers global factors in supporting user interface that is easy to understand and interact with. Our machine’s UI will be mounted will using a touch screen display, which will allow users to make selections and interact with the machine with steps and effort, an aspect that could be important for users who are not the most tech savvy. We also intend to include symbols and images during the timer & snack selection process in our GUI’s design, which would be important in cases where language or literacy barriers might arise. In addition, our vending machine’s notification system will include features which communicate a finished state through both visual notifications and sound as well, which is something that could be important for users who might be hard of hearing.

Part B: … with consideration of cultural factors. Cultural factors are encompass the set of beliefs, moral values, traditions, language, and laws (or rules of behavior) held in common by a nation, a community, or other defined group of people.

Our vending machine project considers cultural factors by ensuring accessibility, inclusivity, and user-friendly design. We use a touchscreen interface with simple language options to accommodate different users. The machine provides both visual and audio notifications, making it easier for people from different linguistic backgrounds to use. Additionally, we follow safety standards and design rules to meet different community expectations. If placed in a specific location, we can adjust product choices based on cultural preferences or dietary restrictions. By considering these factors, this is a vending machine that respects and serves a diverse group of people.

Part C: … with consideration of environmental factors. Environmental factors are concerned with the environment as it relates to living organisms and natural resources.

VendiBaddie takes environmental factors into account by considering the materials used in its construction, potentially reducing waste. The enclosure has been designed to be made of affordable wood panels which tend to be sturdier and more durable, ensuring longevity and minimizing the need for frequent replacements. Additionally, the machine utilizes a touchscreen interface which will effectively help with reducing the need for physical buttons or extra hardware by making the user interaction more flexible and thus lowering electronic waste in future iterations. While our current design does not prioritize energy efficiency, future improvements could explore the use of recyclable or sustainable materials, as well as energy-efficient components or alternative power sources to enhance sustainability and reduce environmental impact.

 

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Ashira’s Status Report for 3/8/25

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

This week, I focused on finalizing all the dimensions of the enclosure in CAD, since there were some spatial changes we wanted to make to the original design – namely, making it more compact & getting rid of unused space. I also spent time reviewing how the laser cutters work and generating all of the .dxf files for our parts to use on the laser cutter, so that hopefully the manufacturing process can go smoothly once we receive our materials. I had initially intended on finishing all the manufacturing this week, since I had planned to source all the enclosure materials from Techspark. However, we realized that the size of the materials they had in stock was not large enough for the design we planned in CAD, so we ended up having to source our materials from McMaster-Carr instead, which pushed back our manufacturing timeline by a week.  Apart from the mechanical things, I also spent a significant amount of time completing the design report; more specifically, I focused mainly on converting the design and use case requirements into a more cohesive description, as well as other aspects from our slides. I also assisted Anna with booting up the RPi.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule? 

My progress has fallen behind schedule by a week, since we weren’t able to get our materials and begin manufacturing on time. This week, I was supposed to focus solely on assembly, but because of the pushback, I will be focusing on splitting my time between finishing manufacturing and assembly. I anticipate that more of the time will be spent on manufacturing the components, since that manufacturing seems like it will be more error-prone, so I will focus on that part more during the week and then hopefully make a push towards the end of the week/weekend to assemble everything by Sunday next week.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This next week, my main focuses will be manufacturing (laser cutting) and assembling the entire enclosure.

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Ashira’s Status Report for 2/22/25

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

This week, I focused on finishing up the design review slides and preparing for the design review presentation, since I was the designated presenter for our group this week. I helped out mostly on restructuring the use case and design requirements to make sure they were more tightly coupled and working on my presentation skills. I also helped out with finalizing our BOM and submitting purchase orders, since getting all our purchase orders in was our group’s main goal for this week. I also worked on finishing up the CAD for the enclosure, which mainly included finalizing all the dimensions and spacings so that we’re hopefully able to start and finish manufacturing everything next week.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule? 

I’d say that my progress is on schedule with our original Gantt chart we made. According to that schedule, I was supposed to finish up the CAD this week and manufacture everything next week, and these tasks line up with what I did last week and what I’m planning to do this upcoming week. 

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This next week, my main focuses will be manufacturing (laser cutting) and assembling the entire enclosure, as well as working on completing the design review report.

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Ashira’s Status Report for 2/15/25

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours). 

This week, I focused on helping generate our bill of materials, CAD up our entire design in Solidworks, and create our design presentation. 

We realized last week that it was in our best interest to finalize our design implementation and features earlier than later, so we made the goal of trying to compile our entire bill of materials by the end of this week. I helped out with picking components for the structural build, as well as speccing out the motors/motor drivers, speaker, proximity sensor, and power supplies, and deciding where to source them from. We have all our components picked out, but we need to figure out extra quantities + shipping costs and everything before we can start submitting purchase requests. 

I also focused on getting the CAD design for our vending machine enclosure finished. In the original Gantt chart, I had initially given myself two weeks to do this, but I felt that it would be safer if I finished a little earlier to give up more time with manufacturing + assembly in case something went wrong. I got Solidworks working and finalized most of the spacing + dimensions, as shown in the picture below, in a way that conformed to the requirements we had set (but also tweaked a little for the design review). I still have to add some small things like slits in the walls to help with joining pieces together during assembly. Depending on the feedback we get from the design review, I might also change some stuff, but overall, I have a fair amount of confidence that we might be able to start manufacturing next week. 

I also helped out with creating our design presentation this week. I spent some time redefining the use case and design requirements to reference each other a little better, since we got a lot of feedback on that from our proposal presentation. 

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule? 

My progress is pretty on task with the Gantt chart we created, if not a little ahead, since I was able to get most of the CAD finished earlier than I expected. 

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

During this week, I’m going to focus on finalizing all the CAD + structural dimensions and hopefully begin laser cutting everything, since we’re planning on sourcing most of our enclosure material from Techspark. I’m also going to plan on helping out with getting our BOM finalized and begin submitting our purchase orders. Hopefully both of these things will be finished by the end of this week. I might also spend some time focusing on practicing my presentation, since I will be presenting the design review.