IGAD
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Progress Log
Week 1:
Discussed a design idea like a solar charging car that would detect the body heat from people, would of included image recognition, thermal imaging, and auto drive. Another idea talked about was a ground penetrating radar device that could detect where underground aquifers were located, possibly made mobile, this idea was ruled out because of cost.
Pictures/Videos:
Video of underground Water Detection done by other student
Week 2:
Discussed ideas such as the braille communication glove for the blind that would have 8 vibration sensors on one glove and 8 button on the other that comes with braille letters and numbers. Also talked about a safe that could scan fingerprints, a one man band device that could play notes from afar and a car temperature regulator designed to keep a car safe.Lastly we finalized a work schedule.
Pictures/Videos:
Table of Work Schedule
Week 3:
CommuDiBi glove idea was approved with the addition of a handheld translator. Had a meeting with advisor discussing addition of internet of things, visual subtitles, minutes with professor, and discussed improvements to graphical website art. Also worked on updating website and project with more language options and researched design requirements such as the type of equipment needed like solenoids and microcontrollers.
Pictures/Videos:
Week 4:
Continued working on the 7 progress points needed to finalize approved design while also updating the website, block diagram, engineer requirement table with specific components, and researching possible additions for disabled vets without arms or legs. Also talked about adding a training program that could be used to teach the blind braille.
Pictures/Videos:
Rough Draft: Block Diagram of SIGLO
Week 5:
Began researching and learning how to use a 3-d software design program called Tinkercad with the specific purpose of making a mock diagram for the o glove that would demonstrate the functionality of the components of the system found in the block diagram. In the diagram the color for the components are orange vibration motors, pink potentiometer, red flex sensor, green color sensor, blue micro-controller, grey LCD. Also looked into how to power the glove with a 9 volt battery connected to a snap connector instead of a battery pack because it was found that the best range for an arduino-uno is 7 to 12 volts, and it was found that the pack would be too large and would not provide enough voltage to the micro-controller or pieces of equipment. The way it will be done is by connecting the positive end of the battery to vin on the arduino and the negative end to the ground. It is also planned to use a toggle switch in series with the battery so we can turn it on or off to save power. All of the work needed to do this will be in the open lab when it opens and we plan to use a solder to connect the red lead of the 9 volt battery to the switch and connect the black lead from the battery connector to one of the grounding pins, while connecting a lead from the toggle switch to the vin pin on the arduino.
For the possibly of developing dial combination key to generate Braille pattern according to the alphabet, potentiometer is the key component to generate Braille pattern base off the tutorial on how it used to generate color in RGB LED when rotating potentiometer. So, Experiment is conducted to see if it generating Braille Pattern using 6 LED. The analog value from 0-1023 of potentiometer and printed alphabet is added to verify it. After testing all the alphabet by rotating potentiometer, it did generate the braille pattern on 6 LED. The Video will be used to showcase it.
Pictures/Videos:
Demonstration Video of key generation from potentiometer
Screenshot of 1st Glove done in Tinkcad
Week 6:
We figure that there is not a lot of explanation on how the potentiometer generate Braille from the last week. So, we decide to explain the code in detail this time. First, we place all 6-digital output (vibration motor) into an array so that it will be easilier to work later. Then for potentiometer, we modified the map function to return a value between 0 and 26, which is total number of letter in apabet. We also used that value in a Switch statement to control which 6 vibration motor to turn ON and OFF. If Typing button press in each state, it prints character to the computer/OLED display as a keystroke.
We also modified Push Button base on how many time it press. For the Menu button, the state in loop will be:
State 0 (no button press)- Potentiometer generate 26 English letter
State 1 (button press one time)- Potentiometer generate 7 punctuation, & 10 number
State 2 (button press second time)- Potentiometer generate 1 Spanish letter & 14 French Letter
We also thinking about using screen reader like ORCA or NVDA to convert text into braille in Python, but we think it not much of a challenge on ourselves. So, we decided to do the code from scratch. After deep research on braille writing and python code for manipulating the text, we come up with a technique that work for us. The process step we will use for convert text to braille are the following:
1. Representing translated text as string (sentence)
2. Detect any capital/number in string (sentence) and add special character before each string (word/ number)
3. Splitting a string (sentence) into a list of strings (word)
4. Add special character (space) between list of string
5. split string (word) access individual characters (letter)
6. Turn each character into data which used for Braille pattern
We make new change to the design and get rip of color sensor since it take too much pin on microscontroller. We add two more new feature to design: a microphone for user to request and virtual assistant to help guide them through the feature in origami box.
In case of no internet, we add one last optional feature like tapping massage that might either not use if we only have one week left or helpful if we have 2-3 week left.
We also made a mock design of the handheld translator with red solenoids, green force sensor, orange vibrator motor, pink speaker, purple microphone, grey LCD (we can't find OLED display), and blue microcontroller.
Pictures/Videos:
Screenshot of 1st Assistant Glove done in Tinkcad
Week 7:
This week our group focused on researching specific components such as the different types of linear actuators that could be used for the 6 pins used to move in a up or down motion to create braille letters. The devices researched as well as the pros and cons are listed in the table below. In addition to the pros/cons listed below it was found that tubular solenoids develop force in one direction when energized and is a pull when it goes into the core when energized and a push when the slug is inside at first at pushes out when energized. Brush less DC motors were also researched which is an improvement from brush ones because they produce less heat and noise by eliminating ionizing spikes from brushes. Pneumatic cylinders were also researched where it was found that a slug is moved up or down by a force of pressurized gas and that their main advantage is that they can hold their position once pressurized not requiring additional power. In the end we decided as a group to test and create our own linear actuator with a servo and dc motor or a nitinol(musicle) wire that changes shape when current passes though it.
Pictures/Videos:
Table of Possible Actuator used for Device
Video of Linear actuator Tutorial
Week 8:
This week we researched various components we will be using in our project including the Hxchen mini vibration motor designed to communicate feedback to the user through a linear resonant actuator that controls the vibration, which is part of a simple electric circuit controlled by a microcontroller. An Electric magnet that works when an electric current in a wire creates a magnetic field around it which is then strengthened by coiling it around a magnet creating a strong magnetic field in the center of the coil. The raspberry pi 3 model b+ which has faster ethernet and power over ethernet support or (PoE). It is a small single board computer that automatically controls various function of a device through input/output ports using its central processor. And the power supply adapter that converts AC voltage found from common wall sockets into DC voltage by using a transformer to step down the voltage, a rectifier to convert to pulsating DC and a filter to smooth the ripples in the waveform. We also went over why we chose each of these specific products were chosen as opposed to others based on design constraints. Furthermore, we worked on updating our project report with the research we did such as similar & existing products and populating chapters 1 and 2. Lastly we worked on the various parts of the website that were went over in the last advisor meeting such as fixing spaces in the engineering requirement table, updating the budget table with new components and pie chart, making a tab for the power budget, and changing the work schedule to show what each group member would generally work on each week. We also worked on finalizing our initial design of our glove and handhed device.
Pictures/Videos:
Week 9:
This week we talked with the professor about the research we did into who we are making the product for and discovered that there were not a lot of blind people without hands so we started looking into a different device called a necklace to possibly replace the shoe that has new features which will be reviewed by the professor before making a final decision. We mostly focused on the report this week where we populated various section such as the introduction, similar devices, etc. For similar products researched the smart cane is a tool that captures the visual information needed by use of a camera built into a set of glasses that is worn by the user which sends the facial imagery to a mobile computer to recognize the person, it then sends that info to the vibration motors in the cane to make a specific vibration pattern for each person. One of the limitations of this device compared to ours is that it does not have a braille translator for the use which lessened the success rate of successfully identifying someone. Another device called the Omni-Trek is a system that allows a user to access their laptop located in a backpack wirelessly using a controller that relays instructions sent by the user and has a joystick that mimics the functionality of a mouse, along with a set of buttons for common commands. The limitations for this device were that it could be adversely affected by severe environmental conditions based on the fact that they only had a fan to account for temperature changes in the backpack, this device is also limited to possible blind users based on the lack of audio output to the user.
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Week 10:
This week was spent largely working on the report by researching the last of the features that will be added. Some issues that needed researching were the use of vibration motors with Arduino as it can cause damage when connected directly. On top of that research on facial recognition and time of flight cameras to be used with the newly added component. Ordering the parts that the project will require was also a big focus this week. This included drivers for the vibration motors, electromagnetic sensors, and a grove driver board.