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Janet’s Status Report for 3/6

During this week, I began basic development of our phone app and started following Google Developers’ courses for creating Android apps using Kotlin. I set up AWS Amplify to manage deployment, hosting, and the backend of our app. I also set up our GitHub repository for the phone app. I also met with my team and redesigned the user flow diagram and wireframe of the phone app, which is now updated to look something like this:

The main changes made to the user flow were:

  • Always ask for user’s home location
  • Each event should have a “check now” function to see if all needed items are already packed
  • App will notify user if one (or more) of their items have been left behind at an event location
  • App will notify user if there is a high chance of precipitation in their area and they’ve registered a related item (e.g. umbrella, raincoat, snow boots, etc.)

Additionally, I worked with my team to complete our Design Review Presentation slides and write our Design Review Report.

My progress for the phone app is currently on schedule.

In the next week, I hope to set up layouts and navigation across different screens for our phone app. I will also continue working on the Design Review Report with my team members.

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Team Status Report for 3/6

Currently, the most significant risks to this project include understanding and correctly using the BlueZ development stack, which provides support for Bluetooth layers and protocols. These risks are being managed by extensively reading documentation and finding relevant projects using BlueZ. One contingency plan we have ready is to use a Wi-Fi webserver to communicate between the phone and the RPi Zero W instead of Bluetooth.

Currently, no changes have been made to the existing design of the system, as we have been primarily focusing on the current design for our Design Review Presentation.

Our updated schedule can be found here. The most notable changes we’ve made to our schedule include creating a separate section for our learning system and subtasks for it, as well as including usability testing for our system.

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Janet’s Status Report for 2/27

During this week, I created basic user flow diagrams and wireframes for how the user will interact with our project’s phone app.

I also downloaded Android Studio and began working on the Android basics course for Kotlin from Google’s Developers.

My team and I are currently on schedule, according to our Gantt Chart.

In the next week, I hope to set up the database for the phone app and have some basic pages of the app done. I will also meet with my team to work on and finalize our Design Review Presentation and the Design Review Report.

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Team Status Report for 2/20

Currently, the most significant risk that could jeopardize the success of the project is the selection of which BLE tags we choose to purchase. Certain tags require more work to be programmed, and we need to keep in mind both our budget and the scope and requirements of our project when purchasing tags. We’re currently managing this risk by creating a pro/con list of possible tag purchases and keeping room in our budget for multiple tag purchases, should some of them not meet our needs.

One change we made to the existing design of the system was choosing to include the phone’s camera to streamline easier item registration using computer vision. This change was necessary because the user burden of initial item registration was brought up as a concern by our project advisor, Professor Kim, and we agreed that having to manually register each tagged item might prove too big a burden for most users (particularly if they have many items). The costs that this change would incur include placing a larger performance burden on the user’s phone and adding much more complexity and risk to our project. We hope to mitigate these costs by finding relevant work related to item recognition and are prepared to default to manual item registration, should this aspect of our project not succeed.

Our current schedule can be found here (slack time and tasks are currently not finalized).

 

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Janet’s Status Report for 2/20

This week, I worked with my team to do some more research on the details of our project. I also set up the images, categories, and tags for our WordPress site and fleshed out the details of our project requirements and tasks for our proposal presentation. Since the majority of my area focus has been in Software Systems, I will be working on the bulk of our team’s phone app. I met with my team members and created the Gantt Chart for our team and began adding each member’s tasks. Additionally, I also drew up a diagram for how the parts of our project will interact with each other.

Our project is currently on schedule, as we are just wrapping up research and our proposal presentation.

In the next week, I hope to have some basic wireframes done for our phone app, a user flow diagram for how the user will interact with the app, and begin basic development of the app in Kotlin.