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David’s status report 4/13/25

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 was still focused on integrating all 6 motors. I spent a lot of time reorganizing the wires, since our setup during the progress demonstration day was an absolute mess. This involved moving 3 of the motors to a third breadboard and shortening the wires so that they don’t get tangled up. We ended up having 3 breadboards where each contained 2 motor drivers. Then I tried to isolate the motor drivers one by one and debug them. This means using the same working combination of RPi GPIO pin and motor on each of the motor drivers to see which ones were faulty. We had to replace a few bad motor drivers but ultimately still haven’t achieved full integration of the 6 motors.

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

I would say my progress is behind schedule since the motors are the most important part of our team project MVP and I still haven’t been able to fully integrate them with the rest of the system due to issues above.

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

As a team, we ran into setbacks with bad breadboards (such as rails that may have been burnt out) and really faulty motor drivers, so I plan to work together with Ashira in debugging the motor drivers one by one and finishing the integration of the motors.

 

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David’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).

Personally, I didn’t accomplish anything really significant, since I spent my entire week debugging components without much success. For the first half of the week, I spent time working with Anna on debugging the speaker and trying to get sound output. I tried soldering wires to the speaker module and connecting them to the raspberry pi. I also installed the libraries and tried making changes to the config files but that didn’t work either. Another thing that I worked on in the second half of the week is trying to get all 6 motors set up along with their motor drivers. The circuit board is set up but the motors need to be debugged. Anna and Ashira had fixed the motor code and schematic for 2 motors, but since we added 4 more motors, I haven’t figured out the issue with unstable and unpredictable movements. 

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 my progress is still on schedule but I really need to try and figure out the speaker issue and the 6 motor integration issues this week. 

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

For this next week, I will try to get all 6 motors moving the way they should when the program is running. Ashira had some suggestions about the currents going through the motors and those adjustments, so that is like food for thought for me. Hopefully, making those measurements will give me some better idea about what is going wrong at the moment. 

 

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David’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).

On Monday, I worked with my team on trying to debug the motor issue that remained from last week. While I personally wasn’t able to figure out what was wrong with the schematic and code, my teammates were able to, which was awesome. They were able to get the motors to spin in a more clean motion as well.  Additionally, I’ve been spending time this week getting the schematic for the speaker to set up, installing needed scripts, and trying to run them to produce sound. Currently, no sound comes out of the speaker which leads me to believe that the wiring is wrong since there is also no indication of the speaker module turning on. I’m trying to fix that part. 

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

I believe my schedule is in progress, but that’s mainly because of the amount of help I am getting from my teammates, who are the best.

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

I hope to figure out the issue with the speakers and get those to output sound depending on what is happening in the system. Also, I think our team is trying to get the motors attached to the vending machine structure so I hope to assist with that. 

 

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David’s status report for 3/15/2025

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 worked with my team on the manufacturing of the structure of the vending machine. During class times, we went to TechSpark and I tried to assist with the laser cutting of the different pieces. Today, we as a team spent a lot of time assembling the structure from the laser cut parts, which included spending time securing pieces together with hot glue.

Individually, I worked on debugging the motor control issue that I had from last week – that the motors were turning as soon as the power was switched on and no program runs. I tried some different things but unfortunately wasn’t able to figure out the root cause. I had some tests where I would get different results each time without changing the setup, which makes us think this is a connection issue. 

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 a little bit behind schedule. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to figure out my issue with the motors, so that’s my task for the next week. My teammates may also be able to work with me on it since they made really good progress for their parts. 

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

I hope to fix the schematic and code for the motors so that when the power is turned on, no motors spin at all. Also when the code runs, the motors each move when they are supposed to and move with proper steps and direction.

 

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David’s status report for 3/9/2025

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 worked on assembling the circuitry on the breadboard for the motor control schematic. Unfortunately, I believe I fried a few of the motor drivers due to not adjusting potentiometers correctly. At first, I wasn’t aware that the voltage regulator and motor drivers had potentiometers so that was a big mistake of mine. I also wrote the code for the motor control. I am currently running into an issue where the motor turns as expected when the program is running, but it also rotates when there is no program running. I am trying to debug that.

Additionally, I also helped out with researching ways to setup the SSH system for Raspberry Pi and the touchscreen with Anna and Ashira (this was the week prior to spring break).

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

I think my progress is slightly ahead of schedule, due to the fact that I was able to dedicate more time to work on the project over spring break since I had no other commitments. I am running into debugging issues (which should be expected for embedded systems related work) so I need to be able to fix those in order to remain on schedule.

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

This next week, my main focus is debugging the motor issue mentioned above where it moves as soon as power is turned on and no program is controlling it. I also plan to add more than 1 motor to the breadboard (hopefully all 6 required for our vending machine). Additionally, we as a team plan on manufacturing the structure of the vending machine (laser cutting the material).

 

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David’s Status Report For 2/23/2025

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, we as a team finalized the Design Review slideshow for the presentation. We also got together to finalize our Bill Of Materials and send out our requests. This week, I also worked on verifying some of the circuit schematics that I came up with by looking online for similar projects or projects with the same components. It was important that I try to ensure there are no obvious mistakes in what I did since most components were too expensive to order backups. I also looked into writing and coming up with code for the motor control part of the system for the Raspberry Pi. I read up on how to use the GPIO pins in the Raspberry Pi since I’m not that familiar with it.

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

I think my progress is a little ahead of schedule since I had planned out the speaker connections and proximity sensor connections the week before, so I was more focused on trying to rethink and improve my schematic ideas. 

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

For this coming week, we hope to complete our design report. Also, I would like to help out Ashira with the manufacturing/laser cutting aspect of the structure. For my own personal tasks, I’d like to have more complete code for the motor control.

 

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David’s Status Report for 2/15/2025

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 researched how to interface all the peripherals with the Raspberry Pi. The peripherals include motors, LED, speaker, proximity sensor, and touchscreen. My focus was on the motors and how they are powered by a source and controlled by the Raspberry Pi. The motors will be powered separately from the Raspberry Pi source. Also, I worked on completing the motor control schematic. 

Additionally, we as a team researched and finalized our bill of materials. I helped with finding some of the exact items for the peripherals on external websites like Amazon and logged them on our spreadsheet

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

I believe that my progress is a little ahead of schedule. I have a rough draft of my circuit diagram already with all the peripherals, I just need to do some more research to ensure there are no obvious shortcomings with it. 

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

I hope in the next week that I am able to research options for motor control code and make some progress with that. I also would like to look more into the I2S speaker bonnet that we plan to use, and make sure all of my signals are connected correctly. 

 

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Team Status Report For 2/08/2025

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? 

We think the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project at this stage are purchasing the wrong materials. Purchasing materials always comes with some risk because we never know if we will accidentally purchase a component that is not compatible with our system. The way we try to mitigate this risk is by carefully doing research and reading the specifications about the material on the website that is advertising them along with any data sheets if they can be found. We’re planning on purchasing more components than we need, allocating part of the budget for emergency replacements, as well as purchasing alternative backup components, in case something goes wrong with our original components.

Another thing that could jeopardize the success of the project at this point is the timeline in terms of purchasing materials & the time it takes to receive them, getting over any learning curves, and integrating all of our respective subsystems together. 

More specifically, our Gantt chart initially suggested that we would wait to generate our BOM and submit purchase orders until all of our main RPI/peripheral circuitry was designed, but we realized that our UI + CAD implementations largely relied on the components we would decide to use for our features. We also realized that the lead time for each of the components we were looking to use differed largely, and taking into consideration the learning curve + time we estimate it would take for integration to occur, we decided it would be in our best interests to start purchasing things as soon as possible. Because of this, we’re hoping to finalize the implementation for our features + identify the components we need by the end of this week. We hope to have our BOM finalized by then and ideally send out our purchasing orders beginning next week. We are hoping to work on this together, in addition to our individual tasks this week, as outlined in the Gantt chart.

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? 

There weren’t really any changes that we made this week since we were working on creating the block diagram from scratch. 

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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David’s Status Report For 2/8/2025

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). 

A large part of this week for me was spent working with my team on the project proposal slides for our presentation. To that end, I mainly helped with the foundation for the technical challenges part of the presentation and the solution approach block diagram, and my teammates edited what I wrote to make it better.

I also tried to compile a bill of materials. We are currently leaning towards using a Raspberry Pi and purchasing those peripherals that correspond to the Raspberry Pi, including the raspberry pi touch screen and speaker that can be used with Raspberry Pi. We haven’t completely decided what type of proximity sensor we wanted as we need some way of detecting a person versus other objects.

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

At the moment I believe my progress is on schedule with respect to the Gantt chart we created as a team. I am making progress with the Bill of Materials and also currently researching different ways to implement the timer, motor control, and interfacing with the touchscreen. 

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

Hopefully in the next week, I can make enough progress with understanding of motor control that I can come up with a schematic or diagram about how the Raspberry Pi will control the 6 motors. I believe online resources such as Raspberry Pi forums and their website will provide me with good enough information about the process. Also, I’ve seen YouTube videos of people controlling motors with Raspberry Pi so I will review those in detail.