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Michael’s Status Report 03/15

This week, we received feedback on our report, which was overall positive. However, one key criticism was that the clarity of our project, as presented, was not fully reflected in the written report. A particularly useful piece of feedback highlighted the importance of ensuring that our paper stands as a strong argument on its own, without raising unnecessary questions or criticisms. This means we need to be more precise in our wording to avoid ambiguity. On a personal note, I did not receive much criticism on the sections I worked on, which was reassuring.

In addition to the report, we worked on our ethics assignment, which encouraged us to think more deeply about the potential consequences of our project. One key concern we discussed was that if our Sudoku solver became too popular, it could lead to people becoming overly reliant on digital solvers and less engaged with traditional puzzle-solving methods. This assignment was a great opportunity to reflect on the broader ethical implications of our work and consider how technological convenience can sometimes have unintended consequences.

On the technical side, we made significant progress in assembling the projector and board setup. Winstone completed a version of the 9×9 grid with a cursor and possible inputs, which we projected onto the board. We had discussions about how to properly align the projection with the physical board to ensure smooth interaction. Meanwhile, I worked on implementing additional features, including an automatic Sudoku solver and a random puzzle generator. These features will further enhance the usability of our system and bring us closer to a fully functional prototype.

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Winstone’s Status Report 03/15

This week I worked on the ethics assignment, met with my team for initial testing and integration, and continued working on my projection code.

The ethics assignment was designed to get us to think about what kind of impacts our project might have in society or the environment. Even a seemingly harmless system like ours that is designed to solve a puzzle can have some kind of harmful effect. It was interesting to read about the hidden effects of a design in Winner’s article.

During our meeting with the professor and TA, we received feedback on our design report. For our final report, we should focus on our writing and expressing our idea better. During the week, we also met up to connect all our peripherals to the Raspberry Pi and run some of our preliminary code on it. I was able to test my projection code and it worked well. We did not yet have our capacitive touch sensor working, so the projection was designed to work only with keyboard and mouse. I was able to write some code that will include signals from the MPR121 (touch sensor), which I will have to test as soon as the touch sensor is operational.

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Moises Status Report

I’ve made significant progress with the 3×3 grid, and the Raspberry Pi is now successfully reading both the rows and columns. While I am able to receive readings and see both inputs, I’m not entirely satisfied with the consistency and accuracy of the touchpad at this stage. Occasionally, the sensor may register an incorrect value due to noise or other factors. For example, when touching row 3, it could mistakenly register rows 0, 1, or 2 before eventually defaulting to row 3 after a brief delay.

In addition to working on the core functionality of the touchpad, I’ve also shifted from polling to using interrupts to capture input. This change has brought some noticeable improvements. Polling involves continuously checking for changes in the inputs, which can be inefficient and lead to slower responses, especially when there are multiple inputs being processed at once. By using interrupts, the system can react immediately when a change occurs, rather than having to constantly check. This approach reduces processing overhead and ensures that inputs are captured more quickly, leading to a more responsive system.

However, there are some trade-offs with using interrupts. While interrupts improve responsiveness, they also require careful handling to avoid issues like missing interrupts or overloading the system with too many triggers. Additionally, using interrupts can sometimes make the system more complex to manage, as it introduces additional code to handle interrupt requests and ensure that each one is processed correctly. Despite these challenges, the benefits of faster, more efficient input handling outweigh the downsides, and I’m confident that this approach will lead to a better overall user experience.

Moving forward, my next step will be to focus on fine-tuning the system and improving the accuracy as much as possible. This will involve further adjustments to the sensor calibration and possibly adding noise-reduction techniques to ensure the readings are more reliable. Once that’s addressed, I’ll shift my attention to incorporating these touch inputs into the Sudoku game system. This will involve using the touchpad to select points on the grid and integrating the keypad for grid selection and number input. By combining the touchpad and keypad, I aim to create a seamless and intuitive interface where users can easily navigate the grid and enter values to solve the puzzle.

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Team Status Report 03/08

These past 2 weeks, our team focused on finalizing adjustments to our project based on feedback from our design presentation. We refined how each system component interacts to ensure a cohesive user experience. A major area of focus was improving the method for selecting a new puzzle such that its more intuitive to the user. With these refinements in place, we put together and submitted our design report, updating our design ideas.
On the development side, we made some progress with the Pygame interface. The board now supports cell selection, highlighting selected cells, and inputting numbers from 1 – 9. In addition to this, we received our projector this week, which will enable us to display the board external. The next goal is to integrate the projector so the game board is shown through it rather than just being displayed on a monitor screen.
There were some setbacks these past 2 weeks, particularly with the Raspberry Pi setup for the capacitive touch grid. Due to a lack of prior experience with these microcontrollers, we initially overlooked the need for some additional components. After acquiring the necessary hardware, we were able to get the Raspberry Pi operational and began testing with a small 3×3 capacitive touch grid. While we were able to successfully detect row touches, column detection did not work as expected. This is likely due to how we made the capacitive grid which means making some updates to its integrations. Moving forward, we will remake the capacitive grid with improved alignment and proper column wiring to have better results and detection. This is an essential step before scaling up to a 9×9 grid.

Next Steps:
– Integrate the projector into the system to display the game board
– Redesign and properly wire the capacitive touch grid to support full row and column detection
-Begin intersection handling to prepare for the full 9×9 grid implementation
-Continue refining the pygame interface to improve the UI.

Despite the setbacks we are making steady progress, and our next steps will help us continue moving forward and reaching a minimum viable product.

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Moises Status Report 03/08

There were a lot of set backs with regards to making progress on my part this week. Along with interviews that I needed to study for, I was having some issues getting the raspberry pi setup to begin testing the capacitive touch grid. Since I’ve never worked with these microcontrollers, I didn’t take into account extra components we may have needed to get it functioning correctly. After a couple of days I acquired the components and was able to get the raspberry pi working and begin looking at testing the small 3×3 capacitive grid I made. I was able to detect touches for the rows but not for the columns. This can most likely be attributed to how I connected the wires for the columns and may require me to remake the grid to get proper testing completed.  So moving forward, I will remake a grid with more accurate alignment along with proper wiring for the columns and attempt to get intersection handling completed as soon as possible so I can begin working on creating the larger 9×9 grid.

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Winstone’s Status Report 03/08

This week, I spent most of my time on working with my team to make final adjustments to our project design using feedback from the design presentation. We went more into detail on how each piece of the system will work as a whole. We focused on details such as the method of selecting a new puzzle with an intuitive user experience. Then, we wrote up our design report with our new design idea thought out. I created some diagrams to better explain our system processes.

Other than the design changes, I continued working with the Pygame library. Now, I can select cells on my board, which become highlighted, and enter a number from 1 to 9. Our projector finally came in this week, so next week my goal is to make it so that it can project the board instead of it just being on a window on my computer screen.

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Team Status Report 02/22

This week was mainly dedicated to the team’s design presentation, which allowed for review and refinement of the project’s design. Michael took the lead in presenting, ensuring the slides conveyed the team’s progress while preparing for potential questions from faculty. Several design updates have been implemented to improve functionality. System diagrams have been updated for better clarity on which components are being used and how they are connected. The team has also streamlined the design by replacing certain components, including no longer using an FPGA, utilizing capacitive touch sensing instead of a keypad for movement, and removing computer vision since it no longer really fit our goals with the project. While these changes do not significantly increase costs, they require additional testing and validation to make sure everything is functional and integration goes smoothly.

The project has encountered some hardware setbacks, (MPR121 sensors and projector) affecting our ability to test the capacitive touch grid and projection. To address these challenges, the team is conducting some preliminary testing, refining the touch grid design, and developing software ahead of hardware arrival to allows us to integrate quickly and begin validation and testing as soon as possible. Given the delay with the projector, simulations using Pygame have been implemented to continued some development.

In addition to the software development and testing, research was made on feeding continuous real-time data into the Vankyo Burger 101 projector. While direct coding progress was limited due to competing obligations, a bit of research was conducted on communication protocols and data interfaces that could be used for this task. The team took into consideration both wired and wireless methods to ensure a steady stream of high-frequency data, while simulations of different data flow scenarios highlighted potential issues such as latency and data integrity. Although all this does is give us some idea but the hardware may function different. A draft technical document was created to outline possible architecture and API requirements, in order to continue improving projector usage.

The project schedule has been adjusted taking into considerations certain issues, with key milestones such as sensor testing, capacitive grid construction, and system integration experiencing slight delays. The team remains proactive in working around different challenges and is prepared to adapt as required. Recent achievements include a design presentation that refined the project’s approach, an improved touch grid layout, and preliminary projection software development. Moving forward, the team will continue testing and optimizing components as hardware becomes available. If delays continue, work will be focused on software elements such as the Sudoku solver and hint generation that don’t require the missing hardware.

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Michael’s Status Report 02/22

This week was dedicated to our design presentation, and I had to present. I spent a good amount of time preparing the slides, ensuring they were filled with robust about our project’s key ideas and progress. I also anticipated questions from the professor to identify potential weak points that the professors might raise, which pushed me to clarify and strengthen our core concepts. For example, I delved into the specifics of our testing approach for intensity and brightness, researching the use of a lux meter to compare lux values and making sure the ratio is over 3x, which I believe offers a reliable method for our tests. This whole process not only made our presentation more robust but also deepened my understanding of the project’s overall direction. In addition to preparing for our own presentation, I took time to provide thoughtful feedback on other projects via a Google form, further contributing to our collaborative environment.

After the presentation, I shifted my focus to furthering our project work by diving into research on how to feed continuous real-time data into the Vankyo Burger 101 projector. Admittedly, I was not able to make significant progress as far as purely writing code went due to many obligations, but I was able to explore various communication protocols and data interfaces. This included exploring both the realms of wired and wireless to determine the most efficient way to ensure a steady stream of high frequency data. I simulated different data flow scenarios to better understand potential challenges, such as latency and data integrity issues, and began drafting technical documentation to outline a suitable architecture and the necessary API requirements. I believe that this process gave me a further understanding of enhancing the projector’s functionality, and I’m confident that with further refinement, this approach will significantly improve our project’s performance. Overall, it’s been a aptly productive week as far as presentation as well as further exploration on areas of the project that I needed further research on.

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Winstone’s Status Report 02/22

This week was our design presentation week, which Michael volunteered to do. Our initial design changed quite a bit since our first presentation, so we focused on creating new diagrams that would make it clear how all the parts would work together. Class hours were dedicated to listening to other presentations and giving feedback on aspects of their design they can improve on, such as use-case and functionality. Everyone seemed to have taken in the feedback from the first presentation, as their designs were more functional and thought out.

My personal work went into focusing on the projection system. Last week, I had found the Pygame library to be the best option for me to work with, so I began testing some code after downloading the necessary packages. We still do not have the actual projector yet, but I wrote some code creating a new window with a blank Sudoku board on a computer. Based on what I found online, the projector we are looking at, the VANKYO Burger 101 Pico Projector, should work with the packages and Raspberry Pi.

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Moises Status Report 02/22

This week, I focused on determining the appropriate sizing for the capacitive touch grid, including the spacing required for a 9 x 9 grid system. Since our system only needs to detect one input at a time, rather than handling multiple simultaneous touches, I realized we could allow for slightly more spacing between the capacitors without sacrificing functionality.

Based on this, I designed a 12in x 12in grid using 1-inch-wide copper foil strips, with 0.375-inch (3/8-inch) gaps between each strip. This layout results in 1-inch by 1-inch capacitor squares, separated by 0.375-inch gaps.

Additionally, I plan to test different dielectric materials to determine which works best, including parchment paper and packing tape.

I do feel slightly behind schedule, as I had hoped to have the board built and begin testing with the MPR121 sensors by now. However, since the sensors have not yet arrived,  and I had a fairly busy week with multiple projects, exams and assignments I fell behind.

Therefore my next steps will be to:

  • Start writing pseudocode for the Raspberry Pi to prepare for debugging.
  • Build a test grid to begin preliminary experiments as soon as the sensors arrive.
  • If the MPR121 arrive, do testing as soon as possible and possibly begin working on implementing the full 9×9 grid.