Room Navigator Log

Week of Jan 29

This was the first week after we had gotten our teams. We mainly focused on coming up with our project ideas and deciding the best strategies to go about them. It was project planning more than anything else.

Week of Feb 5

Wednesday Feb 7:
Group met from 2-4 to plan the project. We brainstormed and researched ideas for components of the project. Specifically, we discussed how to locate the exact position of someone in the room, how to instruct the user where to go effectively, and how to go about coding our ideas.
We met with our TA at 5:30 and narrowed down our ideas. Currently, we are thinking we will use FM radio Arduino module to locate the position of the user in the room. We will have separate Arduinos for each FM module. Then there will be another Arduino connected to vibration motors to instruct the user where to go.

Thursday Feb 8:
worked on the project proposal.

Friday Feb 9:
Group met with instructor from 2-2:30. We discussed finding a different way of finding position in a room such as ultrasonic or infared sensors. Our first priority is deciding exactly what we will use to find position in a room. We also need to think about the standard of systems similar to ours for blind or blind-deaf people so we are giving them instructions in a helpful way.

Week of Feb 12

Goals:

• familiarize ourselves with Arduino
• research how to find position in the room using different beacons or sensors
• decide on the materials we need to find location
• order materials

Tuesday Feb 13:
Elizabeth worked on the Arduino and researched using ultrasonic beacons for an hour.
Here is the code and a video of the Arduino demo. When the button is pressed, the LED lights up for 2 seconds.

Wednesday Feb 14:
Met with TA, Nate and discussed using infrared receivers to determine distance instead of FM radio signals or ultrasonic sensors.

Thursday Feb 15:
Elizabeth worked for 2 hours on updating the budget, Gantt chart, and wiki page to reflect our decision to use infrared receivers instead of FM radio modules. Also researched the Arduino code for implementing the IR receiver and getting signal strength readings from it.
Group met for an hour. We worked on the Gantt chart and discussed using infrared receivers more in depth.

Friday Feb 16:
Met with Jim to confirm our materials and budget.
Neal ordered the materials.

Week of Feb 19

Goals:

• learning Arduino
• Working on code for LEDs
• Researching and starting code for the IR receiver

Monday:

• Elizabeth wrote code to have the infrared LEDs blink once per second.

Tuesday:

• Alex watched videos online for an hour to learn more about arduino applications

Wednesday:

• Neal worked on the powerpoint presentation for an hour
• Meeting with Nate

Thursday:

• Elizabeth wrote code to test the vibration motors using the PWM pins, tested the IR sensor, and worked on wiki page and powerpoint presentation for 2 hours.