Week 3: Testing the Hardware and Working on the Design Document

Today Dzhulia, Alex and I tested some sensors and actuators in the Crazy Lab. Alex' task was to do the tests and complete the wiring diagrams of all sensors and actuators, Dzhulia did the deployment diagram and the construction drawings and I did the hardware diagram and wrote most of the testing section in the design document.

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Hardware Tests

Yesterday, we had found out that the dimensions of our installation make a visual equaliser, like the one you can stick on a car window, very hard to put on the first E. We were therefore looking for alternative solutions and tried to build our own with these two pieces of hardware:

This is the wiring diagram I created in Fritzing:

Unfortunately, it turned out that the microphone sensor is not very good. We asked Harry for a new one and he gave us this one:

Finally, the Neopixel started to actually react to the music. It was, however, hard to detect if it really reacted to the rhythm of the music or followed the same rhythm, no matter which song was played. Alex will do more tests tomorrow, but for now, we had to proceed to the next sensor, which was the distance sensor.

First, we used a PING distance sensor like this one:

Unfortunately, the sensor did not detect a wide range of distance, and the measurements in Arduino were did not change if the distance of an object from the sensor changed. Instead of a PING sensor, we then asked Harry for an Infrared Proximity sensor:

The Sharp sensor works much better than the PING sensor, so we are probably going to use the latter. Alex still needs some time tomorrow to test the Sharp sensor.

In conclusion, we are still quite insecure about the sensors and actuators we will use. We could really use Marije's help at this point, but she will not have time for the team project before next Sunday. So we have to find a way to finish our Design Document on our own.

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Some Advice from Harry

Since Harry was at the Crazy Lab today, we also got the chance to talk to him about our plans for the letter S and how to design it. Only today did I learn that Harry can provide us with an external monitor, which will solve many of our problems. The question is: How will we input the design of the S to the laptop without using the keyboard or the mouse.

Harry suggested that we could either use a joystick or a drawing tablet or a kinect. There are actually many possibilities. I really like the idea of using a drawing tablet or a joystick.

I also asked him about the database we have to use and finally I found someone who knows a bit more about it than the other teachers I've asked so far. He said that the database could be used to store people's design of the S and upload it to our website. I don't really like the idea of using a database at all because it is a bit unnecessary. I really want to learn about databases and it was also one of my learning goals, but for our installation it is not really needed and just creates additional coding effort. I find it a bit useless to include a database just for the sake of having a database. I suggested to Harry that we could use the database in order to analyse which QR codes had been scanned the most by our visitors, so that we could deliver a valuable analysis of people's interests to our client. Harry did not like this idea because he said that the database should give value to the user and not the client. I still think that the client is going to like this and I am not really keen about uploading the design of the letter S to our website. If the user was able to change the colours of each letter, it would make sense, but just for the S...? I'm going to consult with Boris, our product owner, about that.

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Hardware Diagram

Finally, I also created the hardware diagram. I used pictures instead of text because it made the diagram look a bit nicer, but made sure to add all the text that was required.