What did I do this week?
This week I focused my attention on working on the design review report, making sure to address several topics we had put less thought into developing, as well as responding to the feedback that was provided to us from the presentation.
Specifically, I wrote the introduction to the project, trying to better describe the motives around “why the problem is important to solve”, as suggested by feedback.
I worked on the Use Case requirements more, adding some of the ethical issues that are surrounding a location tracking device. Most use case requirements didn’t change, but I addressed feedback regarding the total system cost for installing the UWB anchors inside buildings (this cost is variable given how large a floor is, so I wrote it in terms of a “per hallway” cost).
I worked on the “ARCHITECTURE AND/OR PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION” section, which was mostly a rehash of the presentation.
For the Design Requirements section, I researched the time accuracy of the DWM1001 development boards when utilizing the TWR TOA protocol for distances. I made calculations regarding the required precision needed for our accuracy goal (which the devices meet). From this, I also learned of the latency of communication for the devices (around 1.2 ms on successful communication). Regarding the feedback presented from the presentation, I also focused on why exactly 25 meters is a good range requirement for the ultrawideband transceivers. Again, the optimal minimum range is dependent on many factors, so I tried making clear that this requirement was likely sufficient for a typical hallway in a building.
For design trade studies, I researched other ultrawideband receivers we could use for our project. Most of these were more expensive than the DWM1001 Development board we are interested in using, so I made note of that in the report. I also improved the values in our “technology tradeoffs table”. As Professor Tamal mentioned in the presentation, we should have noted prices for installing systems. I made estimates of how much it would cost to map out a single hallway using Wi-Fi, BLE, or UWB. I assumed it would take 3 devices to map out a single hallway (this estimate is different than mapping out an entire building, as we can overlap the devices for the hallways in a building. Looking back, I am not sure I was clear enough in elucidating this).
I also worked on the system implementation for the webapplication, developing a few mockups of some user interfaces.
Is my progress on schedule?
I was unable to make any meaningful progress on the Django webapp this week, though I was able to instead focus my efforts on planning what I want the design to look like going forward, as well as making contributions to significant portions of the design report. With this in mind, I will work on the “map view” page further next week and try to finish it after spring break.
Next week’s deliverables:
For the web application, I hope to work on the map view, implementing how I want the image frame to function, as well as working on drawing shapes on it to visualize the student’s location. Then I will get started on the shortest paths algorithm and work on visualizing it on the map.