Category: Brandon’s Status Reports

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

I implemented the battery charging system on the pcb using a lipo and a usb charging module with a boost converter. I also submitted our pcb, which we received yesterday.

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 slightly behind as we need to do validation and testing.

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

I want to fully solder everything and help with integration between firmware and software.

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?

We recognize that there are quite a few different methods (i.e. learning strategies) for gaining new knowledge — one doesn’t always need to take a class, or read a textbook to learn something new. Informal methods, such as watching an online video or reading a forum post are quite appropriate learning strategies for the acquisition of new knowledge.

I learned a lot about kicad and how to work with manufacturing teams like jlcpcb and the way that people design, particularly the standards for how a pcb should work like implementing a ground plane and things like that. This was very necessary in order to have a pcb that doesn’t have bugs outside of the circuit designs, I mostly did online research to learn these things.

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours). 

I finished debugging our PCB, there were a couple of issues, mostly during development I didn’t comb through our MCU’s documentation’s well enough. So in summation I put SPI connection on pin 15 which is used to communicate to memory in the GNR8, another issue I created was putting signals on the usb differential pins, I thought that the differential pins were used for controller peripherals with them, not to literally control the MCU. Another issue is that I spatially created an invalid design, the IMU cannot sit where it should if there is a physical buzzer in the way. I have soldered and prepared the pcb for the interim demo.

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

Because i have a solution for the hardware, it doesn’t put the whole team behind, but it does put me behind. This pcb will be our screen and IMU testing board, so it does serve some purpose.

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

I hope to finish the updated design for the pcb and get started with integrating all the code from firmware and software.

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours). 

I fixed my mistake in my first soldering of our pcb and tested the hardware and confirmed that our PCB worked together. I also started the design of the hardware enclosure with the current dimensions.

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 still on schedule, but need to work hard leading up to the demo this upcoming week.

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

 

Hardware enclosure, battery connection, Integration

03/14 – March 14th

 

 

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

 

We received our pcbs, I tested and soldered the pcbs, one issue that I had was that I actually layered two components on the same area but on different sides which required some creatively oriented soldering. Other than that I setup our github and I will now be making sure that the integration is complete meshing our test code together into well documented code.

 

 

 

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 but this week will be busy so lots of work has to be front loaded.

 

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

 

I hope to solder the second pcb and set of components together and to work on helping either with the user interface or fusing GPS data and IMU data together.

 

03/07 – March 7th

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours). 

I completed 2 iterations of our pcb and ordered the pcb which arrived on Friday. The team also worked together in order to complete the Design Report that was due last friday. These were very large projects that needed to be completed immediately in order to move forward to our interim demo and get started on finishing our project.

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 behind schedule because of the pcb ordering time and it was not cheap to order the pcb which might be a concern. To catch up we need to complete key integration that is planned for this week.What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

I hope to solder all components together to get a size reference for our hardware shell along with starting to code the large state machine for the firmware. Because I am hardware lead a key component of my work is integrating all of our hardware to our firmware and confirming it works correctly to match our MVP.

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours). 

In creating the pcb I have run into some problems, namely enabling the buttons while also having a screen, initially I hadn’t fully understood how much verticality the buttons would need to be able to be pressed through the hardware enclosure. So I mainly worked on redoing our PCB design in order to accommodate for vertical clearance and allow us to create the hardware enclosure without worrying about button height. This is all in order to order the pcb on tuesday before break.

Below is an example of a small breakout board that won’t hurt to have on the top of the board.

 

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 behind schedule, we were supposed to order the pcb last week, but due to redesigning the pcb we will order it on Tuesday next week. This means we will get the pcb during spring break, which pushes back our physical integration schedule by a week. However to combat our mistake we have planned to order expedited shipping to get back on track.

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

PCB Design and Design Review Report