Posted on

Aidan’s Status Report for 3/14

This week, I finished the CAD for the Dawggles and 3D printed a first prototype. Specifically, the final touches on the CAD included adjustments for the beam splitter’s holder to be less likely to break, the addition of a curved face-fitting edge that will contain foam, the addition of holes for wires and ports, and the completion of the light tunnel facing downwards from the display. We also incorporated a final assembly that shows all of the components in a digital mockup of the Dawggles.

Our progress is on schedule.

In the coming week, we’ll fit all of the parts into our 3D print, make adjustments to the design as necessary, and re-print it. We will also find and submit orders for a few components that we’ll need such as the foam that will go around the edge of the Dawggles and the band that will fit around the user’s head. On the software side, we’ll get progress on the iOS bridge and translation layer.

Posted on

Patrick’s Status Report for 3/14

This week I aided in refining the final CAD model for the Dawggles. The goggle design took priority over software because we are more concerned with having to tweak and iterate the physical design until the print is right. I also helped to start the print at the end of the week so that we will have a first version of the physical design to test next week.

Along with this, I spent a significant amount of time completing the Ethics Assignment. I feel like the second part of this assignment renewed motivation for the goggles to be comfortable. One thing we are concerned about is external light passing through the biconvex lens. For this reason, we modified the roof part of the goggles so that the OLED wires escape from the side, allowing us to put a full roof on top to block external light.

Overall, we are still pretty much on schedule. Next week I plan on helping assemble the Dawggles and testing the hardware–primarily for testing the display and ensuring it is a comfortable experience.

Posted on

David’s Status Report for 3/7

This week, I spent significant time researching the software interfaces of the Raspberry Pi Zero, the camera, and the display. I figured it would be important to be familiar with the high-level overview of how it all works together before working on the translation feature of the project. Furthermore, I looked more into the CAD design to see if anything stuck out as a poor design decision. After discussing with the group, we figured we could remove the lenses to simplify the first print. After review, I’m happy with our first iteration of the goggles.

Our progress is on schedule.

Next week, I hope to continue working on the software and have various examples of text displayed for the user.

Posted on

Team Status Report for 3/7

The most significant risks to the project still revolve around the mechanical and optical parts of the goggles. Specifically, the placement and angles of the display, mirror, and lens in the  optical system are very specific, so it may require a decent amount of time to fine-tune the distances and angles of optical system components. It may also take several attempts at the goggles to create a design such that each component (mirrors, lenses, etc) can be installed and also held mechanically stably.

The system’s block diagram has been refined slightly because we’ve experimented with different methods of connecting the goggles and the iPhone and determined the best method. Essentially, we want the user experience and simplicity of Bluetooth but the speeds of Wi-Fi. We’ve refined the block diagram by further specifying that the Raspberry Pi will advertise its hosted Wi-Fi network over Bluetooth. In this way, users will pair with the goggles as any Bluetooth device, and they’ll receive a prompt on their iPhone confirming that they’d like to join the goggles Wi-Fi. This system design specification change won’t cost because it is a simple clarification.

We don’t have any changes to our schedule.

Part A was written by Aidan:

The product solution we are designing will meet a specified need with consideration of global factors for various reasons. First of all, the product is designed for people of any age, including the elderly, by prioritizing simplicity. The goggles are simple to pair and use over Bluetooth, and translations require only a single button to be pressed. Secondly, they provide translations which are helpful to tourists and areas of the world where multiple languages are commonly used. We could improve our consideration of global factors by providing translations to output languages other than English. If time allows, we’ll display text other than English on the display so that the goggles are capable of translation from any language to any language.

Part B was written by Patrick:

The clear cultural need that the Dawggles target is language. The Dawggles allow users to both respect and self-learn the native language of a foreign country. This is both beneficial to the user, who is gaining significant knowledge of the foreign language, and also those in the country that the user is traveling. The Dawggles show that the user is making an effort to learn the native language rather than relying on someone to translate for them. This shortens the language barrier and improves connection between the users of the Dawggles and native people.

Part C was written by David:

Dawggles considers environment impacts by prioritizing a lightweight, repairable, and long-lasting design. Using modular, off-the-shelf components means individual parts (like the battery, camera, or display) can be replaced or upgraded without discarding the entire device, which helps reduce electronic waste. Furthermore, our open-source apporach encourages reuse and improvement rather than frequent full rebuilds. Lastly, our 3D-printed goggles can be improved upon while minimizing material use.

Posted on

Patrick’s Status Report for 3/7

This week I spent significant time designing and implementing a first draft of the RPi software. I reasoned that on the Dawggles themselves, we would want 5 threads. The main thread will initialize our Shared Class, Button GPIO, and our camera client thread. The Shared Class will essentially carry everything relevant to the Dawggles, including the phone ip address, goggle_state, gps and translation data, the current picture, the current display index, and several other things that will be used by the other threads. The second and third threads are the button and the camera threads, which both essentially wait for an action and then either signal a callback function or send the image to the phone’s IP. The fourth thread is the server thread, which runs a websocket to continuously receive the gps and translation info from the iPhone, and the fifth thread handles displaying this data.

I created the block diagrams describing this in the design document last week, and this week I was able to finish a first draft of software for all but the fourth and fifth threads. I pretty much used python classes for everything, specifically SharedClass, GoggleButton, and CameraClient classes.

Next week, I hope to finish a full draft of all five threads, and begin testing their functionality on the Pi itself. Along with this, I plan on assisting with printing and modifying the CAD design for the Dawggles.

Posted on

Aidan’s Status Report for 3/7

This week, I set up and tested each of our parts in addition to working more on the CAD. Specifically, I set up the Raspberry Pi Zero and connected it to the PiSugar battery, the Raspberry Pi Camera, and the Adafruit display. I wrote and ran tests to make sure that all of our parts work correctly (for example, checking the percentage of the battery, taking a picture from the camera, and turning the display’s pixels on). I also tested hosting a Wi-Fi hotspot from the Raspberry Pi, which will later be joined by the paired smartphone and used to receive the goggles’s forward-facing images at high speed. Finally, I  worked more on the CAD because I had hoped to begin 3D printing, but the 3D print times were excessively long. To fix this, I simplified our design to remove the lens because the lens would be unnecessary and make the goggles more complicated. I’m still working on updating the CAD and hoping to get our first 3D print this week.

Our progress is on schedule, and the CAD work that was originally behind schedule is now nearly caught up.

As mentioned, we hope to have a first 3D print this coming week. For this week on the software side, I’m aiming to complete the pairing process between the goggles and the iPhone app. Specifically, we want the user experience on the iPhone to be as straightforward as possible (i.e. users simply pair with the goggles and don’t need to host or join any Wi-Fi hotspot). That requirement makes the app more difficult, so for this week I’m aiming to have only the pairing process complete.