Zesty Vesty Weekly Log

Project Page

Link to project page

Week One: September 3

9/04 1hr – Preliminary Idea Meeting

• All group discussed ideas we might be interested in pursuing along with feasibilities.
• Discussed the idea of an internet-connected, sensing, alarm clock that could provide useful morning data

9/06 1 hr - Second Meeting

• We made our wiki page and weekly log page
• Finalized our project idea: The Dorm Buddy
• Discussed goals for our “dorm buddy”:

Week Two: September 9

9/10 - Meeting with Professor Feher and TA Chance

• Discussed project idea
• Polished wikis
• Discussed night light

9/12 - Group Meeting to Finalize Idea

• honed our idea of making a "dorm buddy"
• came up with a more detailed project outline
• discussed our personal goals (what we specifically want to get out of the project), and features we were most interested in having in our creation

9/12 - Meeting with Pro

9/14 - Meeting with Professor Feher and TA Chance from 2:10-3:00 pm

9/15 - Began construction of the circuit and designed the case for the night light from 2:00-5:30m

Week Three: September 16

9/15-9/16 - Brainstormed and Researched Individually: 1 hour

• We continued brainstorming project ideas and di research on other items on the market
• Recorded in shared google doc

9/18 - Conference Call to Discuss Project Idea : 9:00-10:30 pm

• Discussed themes of our idea: safety, personal health, fun
• Ended with our default idea being an IoT Light Jacket
• Decided on the use of Raspberry Pi as our go to system for the project
• Over Particle photon due to its greater versatility including bluetooth application

9/20 - Meeting to work on Gantt Chart and Budget: 9:00-10:00 am, evening

• worked on Gantt Chart
• developed a list of things we need to buy
• finalized the specifics of our project
• started work on project proposal presentation
• worked individually on project proposal
• Kenneth: budget
• Gillian: Gantt Chart
• Andre: Project Proposal

9/21 - Finalizing Project Proposal: 12:30 - 2:00

• Gillian finalized project proposal
• Kenneth soldered night light circuit

9/21 - Weekly Meeting with Prof. Feher and Chance: 1 hour

• discussed final project idea
• set goals for week four

Week Four: September 23

9/25 - Working on Presentation and Finalizing Budget: 1.5 hours

• Gillian: presentation work
• Kenneth: finalizing design for night light case

9/26- Basic Setting up of Pi: 1 hour

• Gillian: set up pi and downloaded latest version of stretch
• Created project Github
• Andre: Researched various methods for sensory data collection-2 hours

9/27 - Continuing Set Up of Pi and Printing Night Light: 2 Hours

• Gillian: continued setting up pi and researching similar pi project libraries (links on project page)
• Kenneth: worked on 3D printing shell for night light
• Andre: Continued researching sensory data collection for vest-1 hour

9/28 – "Finishing Proposal"

• Kenneth: Completed budget / research communication further – 1.25 hour

Goals for Next Week:

• Be able to ssh into pi
• Make sure all materials have been ordered
• Make sure basic pi circuit is functioning
• Finish night light
• Make sure everybody is comfortable using pi
• Establish method that we will work together for the rest of the project (working alone and adding notes to google drive, finding times to work together, etc)

Week Five: September 30

9/29 - Continuing Work on Pi: 2 Hours

• Gillian worked on pi to try to ssh, but encountered some issues that required software installation which took a while.
• Currently still facing problems logging in.

9/29 - "Printing Night Light: 30 minutes"

• Kenneth spent 3 hours trying to configure his annoying printer to work properly
• ~about half an hour was dedicated to the night light file.

9/30 - Continuing fixing the Pi: 1 hour, 15 minutes

• Kenneth came to lab to try and fix pi. Unsuccessful.

10/1 - Continuing fixing the Pi: 1 hour 30 minutes

• Gillian and Chance fixed the pi issue

10/2 - Gillian working in Lab: 1 hour 30 minutes

• can successfully ssh into pi
• tried multiple times to get the email to send with the IP address, unsuccessful

10/2 – Kenneth finishing Night light: 30 minutes

• had to re-solder battery connections and assemble ()

10/2 - Brief Check-in with project group: 15 minutes

• updated everyone on progress
• Andre is going to put his notes about sensors in the google drive
• Gillian is going to show Kenneth and Andre how to operate the pi
• ALL materials have been ordered. Vest is in locker

10/3 - Gillian continued work in lab: 1hour, 30 minutes

• Couldnt figure out how to install ssmpt on pi, so sent Jim an email
• Without ssmpt, cannot send email with IP address
• Looked into installing VNC, but Gillian doesn't have space on personal computer to install (if Kenneth and Andre do though, she can walk them through how to do so)
• Created GitHub for project, and cloned the repo to the pi
• Found code from project that Gillian tried to get to the pi, download failed, will try again later when she has more time

10/3 - Kenneth finished ordering all components: 30 minutes

• Researching the LED Light Matrix and its connector to the pi.
• Ordered correct matrix and connector(bonnet)
• ALL COMPONENTS ORDERED

10/4: Gillian continued work in the lab: 1 hour

• connected pi with filezilla
• having trouble cloning the github repo to pi, didn't want to spend too much time troubleshooting that so will do that later.
• wrote two python programs which can control 1) a blinking LED (blinking.py), and 2) a light (lightcontroller.py). I don't have the breadboard or an LED so I couldn't actually hook up the circuit, but the code should work! I commented the source at the top of both codes if Andre/Kenneth would like to reference that.
• I've been having trouble installing some of the packages of code, so I have a sinking feeling that something may be wrong there. I have attached a screenshot of the error message I get when I go to "sudo apt-get update"

10/5: "Basic circuits with the Pi: 2 hours 30 min"

• Kenneth completed the blinking light circuit with a sample breadboard and implementing Gillian's blink code (pin 8)
• Kenneth worked at creating a potentiometer circuit that displays analog data to the serial monitor .
• Following this tutorial Potentiometer Circ.

Week Six: October 7

Goals for Week Six:

• Let’s meet 2x/week
• Finalize ordering things: DONE
• Look up sound sensing thing for raspberry pi: ANDRE
• Buy correct version: ANDRE
• Make a block diagram (power, setup, accessories) KENNETH
• Make circuit diagrams for the sensors
• Resolve pi issues (updating errors, emailing IP address) GILLIAN
• Potentiometer circuit GILLIAN/KENNETH
• Figure out what we are going to do with the LED
• Reach: how to use phone and bluetooth GILLIAN (started looking into this, decided it would be more worthwhile to work on other things)

10/10: "Kenneth found other resources: 30 min"

• Talked to his bother about the project and discussed a similar project that he had done lighting his band trumpet.
• His brother's project consisted of two series of LED light strip that are interactive: including a mode that increases the number of lights shining with the volume of the the environment around it.
• Following his approach to sound sensing and light interaction, we can have a good sense of direction.

10/11: Gillian working in Lab: 3 hours

• Note from Gillian: Sorry I haven't put in much time this week, I had 3 midterms and so many other things going on. I will be in town on Monday and Tuesday of fall break, and plan on spending a lot of time in the lab making up for my lack of hours this week.
• Power supply for pi: 5V battery pack that supply 2A would be ideal. Kenneth said he had a battery pack so he is checking that would work.
• The light matrix required 5V and up to 4A to power. The pi cannot power the light matrix in itself because of high currents. How do we want to power the light matrix?
• the auxiliary LED light strips require 12V of battery
• pi: still having issues updating it. Issue was addressed as a wifi problem. I still cannot install ssmpt to send emails with the IP address. Hopefully will get to spend some time with Jim tomorrow troubleshooting this.
• Python code for potentiometer circuit is complete and in the "zestyfiles" folder on the pi.
• all of the python code from one of the libraries is on the pi, director /home/pi/lightshowpi. I'm hoping once we get the light matrix soldered to the pi, we can run these scripts to display things on the light matrix.
• Started working on block diagram, it's in the google drive.
• Started working on getting the AD converter working.

10/11: "Kenneth working on the Block Diagram: 2 hours 30 min"

• Mainly researching the battery system and how to power the entire circuit
• Both pi and light board require 5v which is perfect for a battery pack I have
• The pi matches with a micro usb connection, but the battery takes two prongs
• Learning how to operate with the LED matrix board

Power Connection Info

10/12: "Kenneth finished a Draft of the Block Diagram: 1hr"

• Note for Jim: Kenneth is planning on spending hours in the lab tonight, so depending on what time you read our log, we may have updates by tomorrow.

Goals for Week Seven:

• solder light matrix to pi
• start displaying things on the light matrix
• get everything hooked up to pi