This week, I completed the rapid prototyping of 4 pressure sensors and an LDR in Arduino IDE, with strong initial thresholds set for sensitivity. The pressure sensors are connected to GPIO pins (32, 33, 34, 35), and I’ve assigned names to each sensor for easy identification in the serial monitor. The system checks for pressure detection, and prints the sensor name and value when pressure is applied. For the light sensor, I used a TEMT6000 on GPIO 26, and set a threshold to detect changes in the light status. The sensor was sensitive enough to detect when my hand came closer to cover the circuit, simulating the fridge door closing, but it was not affected by the LED light. I’ve also connected an LED to GPIO 25 to indicate the light status — if the light is on, the LED lights up, and if the light is off, the LED is turned off. A demo video is shown here.
Additionally, Jess, Sarah and I completed the design report by Friday. I mainly focused on research and writing on hardware components, justifications, battery life, problem statement and solution overview, and system diagrams.
Overall, my team and I are making steady progress and are on schedule.
Some roadblocks included the late delivery of the LED, NFC tag, and NFC scanner, so we weren’t able to integrate everything over Spring break. However, I plan to integrate the LED system with Jess next week. Even further, with Jess’s progress on the Bluetooth (BLE) functionality and WiFi setup for the ESP32, I will be able to help put together our initial prototype + real LED strips with Wifi data transfer mechanism, which will be key for moving forward with the integration.