Lights Out, Away We Go
Student experience 13th February 2016
As the sun set on a predictably intense exam period, a new dawn in terms of Third Year Project presented itself. With daily lectures finished by lunch, the new term has already gifted more hours for project time than the whole of semester one combined.
And I’m not the only student in this position, with what feels like a race restart taking place, and every third year is now hurtling towards the first corner.
IF AT FIRST YOU DO SUCCEED…
But enough of the farfetched analogies, real progress has been made. Sitting in front of me is a breadboard with an almost complete prototype circuit running. The prototype is able to take readings from an array of sensors (as selected by user input), and then transmit these values wirelessly.
Some minor perfections are still required on the sensing circuits, but fundamentally everything is in place. I was surprised by how easy it was to get this circuit up and running. Initial concerns over the easy of programming a microcontroller on a breadboard were thrown out of the window, with success on the first attempt (probably the first time anything I’ve built has ever worked first time).
Ongoing development of the code has been good too, it’s in a position where by almost all end base-level features have been implemented, with just a few tweaks and additions required.
I mentioned the readings are being transmitted wirelessly, well the next job is to actually receive these readings. By using a ‘sniffer’ tool, I’m able to detect the packets transmitted. For each reading there’s around 100 packets, each with strings of assorted numbers, understanding what they mean appears to be the next logical step.
NEXT ON THE HORIZON
Although there’s been great progress in the last couple of weeks, this is only just about where I wanted to be at the end of last semester, so there’s still catching up to do.
While awaiting delivery of a few minor components (an ongoing theme of the last couple of weeks), I’ve been thinking about the route ahead. With some finishing touches on the circuit, we’ll be ready to progress to PCB design and potentially a 3D printed enclosure.
Then while they’re in the works, it will become time to start with software development. It has to be said, this is what I’ve been losing the most sleep over. Besides some basic Java programming, I’ve virtually no experience writing programs to be run in operating systems, let alone with GUIs. I’m secretly looking forward to this though, I mean how hard can it be?
What worries me more though, is the data acquisition process. There’s an entire stage between the core device transmitting readings, and a shiny program displaying the results, that I’m yet to get my head around. I’ve thought of a few options, but no idea how sensible they are, and sceptical about the ease of implementation.
Anyway, that’s where I’m at for now, let’s hope this momentum will continue in the weeks ahead. The other day I naively agreed on a post-Easter holidays date to test a fully functioning prototype in a willing primary school, that doesn’t leave too long!
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