Tool Tracker Log

Week 1: January 21-28

This week, we met in class for the second time and were assigned to our project groups. We met briefly to discuss ideas during class, but we did not decide on a final project. Originally, we talked about producing a gadget that could produce a properly portioned protein shake and automatically shake the drink for you. We thought a lot about how practical this idea could be and ultimately decided that the project might be too simple. On Monday, January 22nd, we met outside of class and decided, after much consideration, that we wanted to do an RFID Check-in System. We believe that this project will offer a lot of challenge, but will still be something that we can complete with a lot of research and work.

Week 2: January 28 - February 4

This week, we slightly modified our idea after talking with Nathan. We met with him on February 1st to see the lab for the first time, solidify plans for our project, and talk about our plan for the upcoming week. On February 4th, we met to work on our Wiki page, project proposal, and Gantt Chart. Since nobody in our group has much experience with Raspberry Pi or Arduino, one of our biggest challenges this week was deciding which method to use for our project. We know that there are pros and cons to both of these technologies, so we talked about this with Nathan, but did not reach a final decision.

Week 3: February 4-11

This week, we will continue working on our final project proposal, which is due on Friday of this week. We completed some basic research about RFID technology to get a better understanding of what materials are needed to complete this project. Also, we met with Nathan on Wednesday to discuss our Wiki Page and make sure that our proposal was ready. We split up the parts of this assignment evenly, with some of us working on the budget, the research, the Gantt Chart, etc. Also, during our meeting with Nathan, we decided to use the Raspberry Pi instead of the Arduino, because we know that this will offer more functionality rather than only completing one programmed task, which we will need for our project. Now, we are getting ready to begin more extensive research on programming the Raspberry Pi, and we are also almost ready to place orders for our materials.

Week 4: February 11-18

In class last Friday (February 9th), we received our Raspberry Pi and other hardware components in class. We had a brief discussion/overview of how we should begin to use the Raspberry Pi and set it up so that we can do work on our laptops at home. We met as a group on Sunday (February 11th) for a little over an hour to start working through these tutorials on the class Wiki page. We used the "Set Up and Configure a Raspberry Pi" tutorial to download Raspbian and Etcher. We also spent our time working on the presentation for our project proposal, which we will be giving this Friday, February 16th. Lastly, we emailed Professor Mell and plan to meet with him on Wednesday at 6:00 pm when we meet with Nathan.

On Monday, we met in the Urbauer lab to