This Week
The majority of this week was spent preparing for the design review presentation. As part of this preparation, Shravya and I went over our designs for the control circuit for the solenoid control, and concluded that her design using an NMOS for low-side switching would be best for our design. If we used a PMOS, the design could be shifted to work as a high-side switch, but we decided to go with the circuitry more-closely resembling the low-side switch presented in the Adafruit 412 design document [1].
Shravya and I also reviewed our designs for the power regulation. We decided to use a 12V DC power supply adaptor that plugs into a wall outlet to be the main source of power to our solenoids and the Nucleo32 board. We will also use a 3.3V power regulator to decrease the voltage from 12V to 3.3V for an input to the Nucleo32 board.
Currently, my progress is behind schedule. Implementation of eye-tracking to identify major sections of a screen a user is looking at (unprecise eye-tracking implementation) has not been developed yet. Additionally, the design for the 3D printed solenoid case, which should have been done to make up for the solenoids not being able to be tested this week, has not been made yet either. To make up for this, the design for the 3D printed solenoid case will be completed on Sunday (October 6th, 2024), and the implementation of unprecise eye-tracking will be worked on this upcoming week. If implementation of unprecise eye-tracking is not completed this upcoming week, then I will continue to work on it over Fall Break (October 13th, 2024 to October 19th, 2024).
Next Week
This upcoming week, I will complete the first design for the 3D printed solenoid case and will begin work on implementing the eye-tracking software. My main goal with the eye-tracking software next week will be to be able to identify major sections of the screen, such as breaking the screen up into four equally sized quadrants and determining which one the user is looking at. Then, in later weeks, make the eye-tracking precise to the point where it can identify the user looking at the different commands displayed on the screen. Additionally, if the Adafruit 412 solenoids arrive, I will begin testing them with the team to ensure our design works, and that the solenoids will be functional for pressing the keys of a piano.
Next week, the Design Report will also be completed.
[1] “412_Web.” Adafruit Industries, 12 Oct. 2018. https://mm.digikey.com/Volume0/opasdata/d220001/medias/docus/21/412_Web.pdf