This week our team focused on implementing the second Bluetooth drumstick as well as a reliable hit detection mechanism. This led to a few changes in our system controller–first, we refactored the callback functions in the BLE module to more accurately characterize the accelerometer readings, and we also modified the ESP threads to measure hits based off changes in acceleration rather than a static threshold. One risk to the system we are currently facing is the increased latency of the drumsticks when operating simultaneously; our mitigation plan is to explore other threading libraries such as multiprocessing or to research additional functionality in the asyncio module to better handle concurrent execution. In regards to the lighting concerns brought up in last week’s status report, we are in the process of testing with additional overhead lights, which appears to be an effective mitigation strategy for ensuring consistent output.
Our team has run a number of tests thus far in the development process: while much of our system testing is qualitative (measuring audio buffer latency being impractical with timestamps), some of our formal testing includes round-trip time for the BLE, accelerometer waveform generation with the MPU6050’s, and CV frame-by-frame delay measurements. Additionally, as we move into a fully functional deliverable this week, we plan to conduct an end-to-end latency measurement between the accelerometer spike and the sound playback, and we will also validate our 30mm use case requirement by ensuring that the perimeters for our each of our drum pads remain sensitive to input, even across varying environments, lighting, and drum configurations.
The results of our tests will be compared directly to the use case and design requirements we set out to fulfill, and our goal of diversity and inclusion will be achieved through rigorous testing to reach a comfortable user interface. We do not have new changes in our schedule to report, and we intend to approach a viable product in the coming weeks.