This week, we finalized our list of materials and ordered our first parts. The parts most relevant to my work are the microcontrollers we decided to use for the mat and the door lock. We decided to use the same microcontroller for both, so we ordered one, which we will use to test both. We bought the Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32S3 microcontroller, which can run code developed for Arduino and supports wireless communication via Wi-Fi. Now that we have compiled our materials list, I can start writing the schematic for our PCB, which we are going to use for our mat. I plan to use Fusion360 for PCB development. We have allocated one week for schematic design and one week for board design, so we should expect our PCB to be here after spring break at the latest. If we can expedite the development of our PCB, we might be able to get it before break.
In addition to doing research into required parts, I worked on our app development and pseudocode for the mat. For the app, I am using React Native and Expo, which allows me to write in JavaScript and create an iOS app from my laptop (which uses Windows). So far, I have created a user interface with song names and images. The next step is to make it so that if an image is clicked, then the corresponding song will be sent via Wi-Fi to the mat. For the code for the mat, I only wrote high-level pseudocode, because I was not sure which microcontroller we would choose to use (we were considering Arduino and Raspberry Pi). Since we have chosen to use microcontrollers using Arduino, I can now rewrite the pseudocode in the Arduino IDE.
My progress so far has been on schedule, but I will need to put in more hours during the next few weeks in order to stay on schedule. This is because the amount of work that we can do is now much greater, and the more work we do sooner, the more time will be left for debugging, ordering new parts, and testing. This week, after finishing our design presentation slides, I will focus on the PCB schematic. After that is complete, I will continue working on the app and the software for the mat. I will also help Jada and Brooke if needed with manufacturing.