Category: David’s Status Reports

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

Finished mounting. Attached microphone and battery components. Working on final deliverables.

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

We are on schedule and done other than write up related documents.

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

Final project done. Both glasses.

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

I worked a lot on mounting and making the slide deck. I spent a few hours working on prepping slides for our final presentation and have mounted the first pair of glasses for our demo. With this, we also did much of the testing needed for our final presentation / report(s).

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

We are on schedule. All we need now is to finish up the final pair of glasses and do a tiny bit more testing.

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

Final project done. Both glasses.

As you’ve designed, implemented and debugged your project, what new tools or new knowledge did you find it necessary to learn to be able to accomplish these tasks? What learning strategies did you use to acquire this new knowledge?

In terms of technology tools, this was my first time using Rpi / Rpi Pico. To learn how to work with these I was able to use online resources and the Rpi documentation available online. This is a pretty good strategy for learning new technologies because there is often a lot of documentation available that is accurate and consistently formatted. I also had to learn a lot about data sending algorithms (NEC protocol and alternatives). To acquire this new knowledge, I found youtube videos quite helpful. The images in these videos were good at explaining single protocols. I also learned (or remembered from a while ago) how to read data sheets on specific circuit parts. To do this, I was able to look online for graphs or words I didnt understand and use this to figure out more complicated parts of the data sheets.

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

I helped to debug the last bit of our 2 way communication. It now works as seen in demo. As a team we also had some 3d prints of mounting and are going to begin assembling.

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

We are ahead of schedule. We now have about a month for mounting and stress testing. Our updated schedule on this website and during our demo reflect this.

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

Next week we will hope to either have one working pair of glasses or a large portion of one pair done.

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

First me and DJ implemented bidirectional communication. After that, I was in lab debugging bi-directional communication with him. These together took a lot of time (our >12 hours) and is still not done. We have an annoying bug when 2 people speak at the same time our system occasionally ends up stuck in a loop deciding who has priority to transmit vs receive.

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

We are ahead of schedule. All we are left with now is debugging our bidirectional system and mounting. Todd has printed the first attempt of our mount and seems like we may only need a couple more iterations.

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

Next week our my main focus is debugging bi directional communication. In fact, this is probably our last main tech goal and it may take us some time depending on how difficult the bug(s) are to find. If we absolutely cannot figure it out, there are some workarounds that may result in a slightly less clean solution, but still within our demo bounds.

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

I wrote code for pwm decoding and lcd screen. I then tested this code and did some debugging until it worked on the pico / breadboards we have set up. Then, I combined my codebase with DJs code that connected the Pi V2T with the pico and we were able to setup a full line of communication. ie Voice to text to pi to pico to LED to receiver to pico to LCD screen. This was more or less one directional tech mvp.

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

I am solidly ahead of schedule. We now have one directional transmission with high accuracy. There are hopefully some photos of this in team report.

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

Next week our main focus is on the second direction of communication. This includes some protocol handling for if 2 people are speaking at the same time. We will also spend some time on accuracy debugging. It seems like our accuracy is dependent on our V2T software (which we dont have control over), however this accuracy can be fine tuned with microphone placement. We will be testing this more soon so we know how to properly mount our devices.

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

I wrote more code for pico pwm encoding. Along with DJ, we worked with multimeter for a decent amount in tech spark to ensure it was working correctly. I then continued and wrote more code for specific bit sending, ie sending a sync and an entire packet following. I then spent a few hours in lab working through this and debugging to the point that it worked! I then spent some time drafting decoding code. Some photos of our lab progress should be in the team report.

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

I am ahead of schedule now. Getting the encoding software working is a main part of our project and a part that I thought could be subject to delays. Now that I am through this I (we) are in a very good state to get our entire integration complete in coming weeks.

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

Next week my main focus is debugging the decoding software. This will complete our IR  and encoding submodules which means all we have left in theory is integrating with LCD and V2T submodule. Hopefully the decoding goes relatively smoothly as well in which case we are in a very good spot!

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

I spent probably 15 hours on design report so evidently some of my project work is a little lighter this week. However, even though we got the pico later than expected I was able to begin some research and code for that. I drafted out some code for PWM and for duty cycle modulation. I made 2 versions of this, one for SW timed and one for HW timed. Because the pico wasn’t picked up until after I was already on break, I was unable to test yet but hopefully not a difficult process.

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

I am nicely on schedule. Much of our work is now dependent on getting the pico code to work on board. Hopefully this isn’t a terrible process because once its done, then we can shift over to LCD and receiver decoding subsystem.

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

Next week my main focus is putting and debugging the pico code on the pico. After that, me DJ and Todd will likely spend an afternoon (or two) just working through bugs to get the light modulation working strongly. Again, hoping no huge issues as this is a large part of the project.

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

I was out of town for much of the week so most of my accomplishments were remote accomplishments (plus we were waiting on parts anyways). I spent a decent portion of time creating and then going through batches of edits for the slides so that DJ is ready to present next week. I was largely ahead of my gantt schedule but I went ahead and continued research into signal Rpi protocol libraries. I have researched the gpiozero / libgpio library and went through example codes that proves that it should be able to hit our design requirements of light modularization.

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

I am ahead of schedule, we got through V2T relatively fast and can now start transitioning to hardware components as all of our parts should now be here to pick up!

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

Next week my main focus is working on packet protocol. I would like to use the GPIO library(s) to actually write the code for the led modularization and be able to code our encoding scheme into the RPi. Along with todd, we would also start some hardware implementations such as putting the V2T onto the Rpi and beginning to test light modularizations.

I began the week off spending time fine tuning both our proposal slides and the actual presentation. Because I was the one presenting, I added some notes for myself and practiced for a few hours prior to actually presenting. After this, I spent the middle of the week researching and coming up with a parts list, specifically focusing on the voice to text components of our project. I began with research on specific lighting components and searched through digiKey for their respective parts lists. Along with DJ, we determined that 950nm was sufficient for testing and had good directivity and ability to modulate frequency. After, I did research on open source models such as Open AI Whisper and Vosk, before ultimately choosing Vosk as the most promising V2T software to begin with. I then made the first proof of concept Vosk model that translated chunked up audio files into English test. This was a good enough proof of concept that we felt comfortable selecting Vosk as our primary focus for open source V2T. Following this, I did research on how to make V2T compatible on raspberry pi with some of DJs modulation specs. I have now been researching and playing around with the pigpio library for RPi and its ability to potentially be our way to accurately modulate eyeR.

My progress is on or ahead of schedule. Most of my scheduling for this week was regarding determining the parts we would use for our project. Not only did I complete this, but we put in order forms and have begun making Proof of Concepts for some of our system components. Mainly, the V2T software seems easier to use than we initially thought so we (DJ/I) are in a good position on that. We are still waiting for confirmation of our ordered parts but hoping that those are also as expected.

Next week, I hope to begin integrating the V2T software and the Rpi. If our microphone is here by then, I would like to get the RPi to take in microphone waves and convert to text. Otherwise, I would like to deliver a similar system but with the microphone replaced by computer audio files. I would like to have the software on the RPi for live translation as well. From here, I can then (not necessarily next week) coordinate with DJ and start to mesh together software components.