This week I was supposed to write testing frameworks for the device and server, which I started work on. However, I did not completely finish them because I started working ahead on the receipt printer. It came to my attention that in order for Rachel to do her ML training, we would need to construct a set of training images of the cards we will be using. In order to do that, we need to be able to print cards, so I prioritized being able to print receipts. There were a couple of hang ups I had to address along the way.
- I needed to be able to connect the raspberry pi the the school internet, which I was able to do with Ankita’s guidance. This required me to mess with some of the network configuration files and learn how the wpa_supplicant daemon works and how network cards are represented on Unix systems.
- Then, I needed to figure out how to connect the receipt printer in a productive way. I discovered that serial ports are represented as tty ports. There was some more configuration files I needed to mess with to make sure the actual pins were connected to the file though. Then I was able to write to the file and send data to the printer for the first time.
- Finally, did some research into making it possible for my partners to ssh into the pi instead of just me. Next time we meet, I will register their public keys as authorized keys so they can do work.
This week I got behind on the testing frameworks. I am confident that I can finish them before the end of next week along with my other tasks so that we can get back on schedule.
Next week I am going to make the interface I started with the printer concrete. This task is high priority so we can start printing cards and Rachel can be unblocked.