Accomplishment: This week I connected the Jetson to battery power by using a USB to barrel jack cable to connect the Jetson to a rechargeable power bank. I also started designing the casing in Autodesk Fusion to laser cut or 3d print, and I started working on the final presentation slides.
Progress: I am behind in progress. I flew out to see family due to a family emergency this week and was not able to work on improving or testing the hardware components.
Projected Deliverables: This week I plan to finish the casing CAD file and laser cut a prototype, and solve the ultrasonic sensor issue. I will also reach out to LAMP to possibly set up a user testing time before our final demo.
As you’ve designed, implemented and debugged your project, what new tools or new knowledge did you find it necessary to learn to be able to accomplish these tasks? What learning strategies did you use to acquire this new knowledge?
For the project, I’ve learned a lot about circuit design, PCB design, GPIO configuration, and Jetson setup. For circuit and PCB design, circuits weren’t my strongest area before starting the project, so I spent a lot of time watching videos about similar projects, reading through circuits reference information, and prototyping circuits using breadboards or TinkerCAD simulations. For the GPIO configuration, I also looked into similar projects and found GitHub repos of GPIO configuration libraries that we could use. When setting up the Jetson, I ran into a lot of permissions issues regarding library and package installation and GPIO configuration, and had to learn how to modify permissions settings, and I became a lot more comfortable with Linux terminal commands. I found practice to be the best way to understand the concepts I was looking into, so I did a lot of trial-and-error problem solving and prototyping. I was also working on electrical projects for booth at the same time as working on this project, so I was also able to practice circuits, GPIO usage, and Linux command line tools doing those projects as well.