Jamari’s Status Report for 4/25/26

This week I have been working to test and integrate our force-sensitive resistor with our design. I did some experimenting to understand how it works, and with some help from Tsairus, decided to use a digital output pin to create a voltage divider with the FSR and internal pulldown resistor on the analog pin. Once I got that working and could see our likely range of voltage values, I made changes to our codebase to reflect expected functionality and integration with the system.

For next week, I will be preparing for the final demo and finishing up all other deliverables. I will do some more solo testing to verify different tip contact points with the FSR sensor, and as a team we will complete full integration testing for the final demo.

Jamari’s Status Report for 4/18/26

This week I was working on bluetooth communication and system integration. Currently, our implementation uses Human-Interface Device (HID), which is how digital stylus acts as an air mouse. However, this may cause problems when we start integrating our FSR for pen thickness, since a mouse cannot read analog push data.

My current implementation utilizes service + characteristic uuids to establish a connection between the MCU and computer, then send over data. One issue I ran into was getting both pygame & bleak (bluetooth library for python) to work together. This issue was fixed by implementing multi-threading into our python code, so both can run together without blocking. We will need to check if this introduces any latency issues compared to our current approach. I will work more to help Christian with FSR integration.

Per canvas, I’ve been able to learn more about bluetooth and the pygame application for canvasing. Learning these resources has often come from online articles to upstart code, videos for debugging help, and generative AI to help fill in conceptual gaps. I also reinforce my understanding through explaining to my teammates.

Team Status Report for 4/4/26

After completing the interim demo, we are finishing up the major development portion of our project and moving primarily into testing and verification. The main parts of the project we still need to include are the force-sensitive resistor (FSR) to simulate a pen writing when pressure is applied, and our optical flow sensor, which should be ready integrate with our new PCB.

For testing and verification, our primary tests to run are for latency, accuracy, battery, and weight + housing. For latency, we will have timing modules as data moves through our system, with end-to-end and round-time travel measured. Housing & weight will be gathered from user feedback during and outside of lab time. Once we have finished incorporating the (FSR) and optical sensor, we will conduct writing sessions to measure battery. We should be in a good place to incorporate any feedback from stakeholders.

Jamari’s Status Report for 4/4/26

For this week, I have mainly focused on slight debugging for our canvas application to avoid off screen bugs and coordinating our verification & validation plan. I am currently working on our latency testing through setting up timing modules in our code. As we continue to reiterate our housing design, I also want to tackle our weight + physical design requirements by incorporating user feedback into our future designs.

For the upcoming week, I will continue with latency verification and housing validation. In terms of core functionality, I will also help on the software side of integrating our force resistor and full system integration.

Jamari’s Status Report for 3/28/26

This week, I worked to finalize the bluetooth implementation. With Christian’s help, we found a way to execute code for a general computer to recognize our digital pen as a bluetooth device and connect. This will likely be our permanent communication solution moving forward. Our software has been fixed to clamp the cursor at the edge when the pen goes out of the window, but it is creating some bounding issues that I will look more into.

For next week, I will be helping put together our scripts and materials for our interim demo. After the demo, I will move to setting up testing and validation execution since most of the software is complete. I want to start with setting up timing modules and checking in with Christian to confirm plans for measuring CPI & pen accuracy.

Jamari’s Status Report for 3/21/26

This week, I did some experimenting with bluetooth and helped to finalize the canvasing application. Our implementation currently utilizes built-in functions for tracking mouse events and updating the canvas cursor through changes of the pen location. We also added the draw/move mode functionality on the software side to simulate the use of a button or pressure sensor (through we are waiting to add that to our current housing design).

For the next week, I will be working to finish our bluetooth plan and preparing resources for the interim demo. Once our PCB is ready, we will incorporate it into the physical design, and I can adjust the software side of the code as necessary.

Jamari’s Status Report for 2/21/26

This week I was able to find and create a basic software program for tracking standard mouse inputs to performing drawing functions. The code utilizes event handlers that’s synced with the mouse through html. I also created some javascript code for scanning and connecting a bluetooth device. It currently needs testing as we are waiting for our microcontroller to come in can test the BLE connection of the code + sending basic data. I have also been working with Christian as we may consider a different canvasing approach through pygame, which has built-in functions for better processing bluetooth input.

This week I plan to look more into the structure our of bluetooth communcication. I’ve followed some steps for getting the testing environment onto my device. Now we need to work on setting the struct for what data to send using the GATT protocol.

Jamari’s Status Report for 2/14/26

This week I completed I did more research on the software side of our project. I found documentation online for setting up and rewriting to a canvas with mouse strokes, as well as integrating bluetooth into javascript. This gives us a good idea of how we want to format data (x & y position, z pos or isPressed). We will continue forward with using javascript + html for our software functions & try to see the differences between hosting locally and on a browser. Progress is relatively on point with a few strides needed to formally define the software architecture for our design presentation.

This week I plan to complete the software architecture and look at the interface between MCU controller and reaching the computer with saved code examples for later use.

Jamari’s Status Report for 2/7/26

This week I worked to define the use case for our project so we can easily map out our use case requirements. I also contributed to solidifying the technical challenges for the versatile stylus and thinking about what testing methods we can use to ensure our hardware and software are functioning properly. With the next week, I am looking to research and experiment with the canvasing capabilities using JavaScript & HTML, with some rudimentary code to understand how we want to setup our conversion module.