• 1st Week (5/9/20)

 Meeting with professor Dr.Ejaz and Notash and paired up in a group of 3 members including Dillion Tierney, William Hobbs & Vinh Tran. Also discussed senior proposal rules and regulations.

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• 2nd Week (5/14/20)

During this meeting we were on a zoom call with the rest of the class and discussed the design ideas our group came up with in which the class and professor could critique and add professional feedback used to help us in solidifying our design proposal. The first idea discussed was the car temperature regulator used to monitor the internal car temperature and body heat of the people inside to make sure a person or animal doesn’t become overheated in a parked car, feedback given by the professor was that it would be limited by the proprietary technology of the car and how it would be difficult to modify that based on the fact that no one on the team had experience with working with cars. The second idea discussed was the ComMuDiBi glove that could be used to communicate with the deaf and blind using braille language and could read and write the language using the vibration sensors on the read or write glove, feedback given was that it needed more specifics but was the most liked based on opinions from the rest of the class. Next, we talked about the one-man electronic band which used a drum matt and gloves to play different instruments at the same time, feedback for this was that it also needed more detail in the block diagram. Lastly we talked about the Hicare Bed which could detect when a person falls off a bed and deploys an airbag to prevent injury, feedback for this was asking where the force sensors where and how it would be used to determine when a person falls off the bed in which we clarified that they would be placed equidistant from each other in a grid pattern that could tell where person shifted their weight indicating the direction of their fall. At the end of the meeting we decided on a list of priority for the professor to consider which idea we liked the most which was the glove, one man band, Hicare Bed, and then car temperature regulator which we later decided to scrap altogether.

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• 3rd Week (5/21/20)

During this meeting we discussed what “minutes of meeting with the advisor” meant in the syllabus and how it has changed from face to face meetings in the spring before covid-19 to instead diligently record any communications(medium doesn’t matter) that are had with the professor and updating them by the week or date with what was discussed. We also discussed if it would be better to have the glove or handheld device have an “internet of things integration” to connect to the internet, to which the professor gave the idea of a manual connection option that can be used when there are difficulties connecting in addition to the automatic option for flexibility and convenience. Likewise we then discussed features of our project such as adding closed captioning on the LCD displays and a speaker that can read the messages out loud because we learned from the professor that blind people and their partners may share similar difficulties when communicating, especially with caretakers, relatives, families and friends. The professor also showed us a similar product that senior design student at MIT created which was a handheld text to braille translator that could be used to read books( this helped us in understanding what our own handheld device would do and how our product would integrate both) and could communicate with the glove using bluetooth. We then talked about adding improvements to the glove such as adding a cylindrical dial that could would have a specific vibration for each letter to help with typing to which the professor said we should look into to research more and find out if any other products have something like this to finalize our proposed design, the professor also  said we should divide the tasks and responsibilities to look at all angles of this idea and said that any technologies that we think can be used to benefit the project can be added.  However, it was stipulated that to keep a good work flow a certain level of capabilities and engineering requirements should be achieved first and then any new additions could be added on if time permits. We then talked about how the concentration we each excel in such as computer or electrical could be used to help delegate tasks to others in order for us to learn more about each other’s concentration in order to add to our resumes. Furthermore, we talked about changing the graphical art of our website to be more clear and distinguished by color and font coupled with smooth backgrounds, and talked about whether components would have to be made from scratch or could be used as a premade, where the professor clarified that you don’t design an alternator in a car but instead get parts to work together, which is a major task called the integration phase of the project that requires an engineering requirement table to justify and verify the various parts. Lastly we decided that Monday at 4:30pm would be used as a time for weekly meetings id we need them and that a weekly report would be submitted each week updating the professor on our progress.

 

• ​5th Week (6/1/20)

During this week we had another zoom call with the rest of the class clarifying the concerns or group and many others had with the weekly reports and work that needed to be done each week in the class. In this meeting it was discussed that the weekly report would have to update the description, block diagram, engineering requirement table, work schedule, timeline, and final budget. The professor then clarified that the work schedule was not used to show what time of the day each group member was working but instead used a guide to show what sections of the project we were working on such as the code. We then talked about how the progress log and how it would be used to update the professor on the specific research our group had completed for the week and needed to include pictures and videos of the things researched and referenced, overall the feedback given to us was that it needed more detail. We also talked about the engineering requirement table and how it is not supposed to be used as a place to list the technical specifications of the components used in our project but instead for what it does for your project as well as its justification and how it is verified. Next, we talked about the minutes with the professor and how it should be highly detailed and not the 2 or 3 bullet points we had at the time. The professor also gave us specific feedback to little things we needed to fix on our website such as renaming diagram to block diagram and changing the design of our time and date to be spaced out to show the day of the week more clearly. Furthermore, we talked about the timeline and how a gant timeline was the preferred method of use to show which areas of the project would be worked on at a specific time in relation to the width of time of the project. Lastly we looked over the websites of the other groups and added professional criticism toward the graphical art of some in order to read them easier and talked with the professor about adding the senior design proposal template to the website.

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• 6th Week (6/9/20)

During this meeting one of the first thing talked about was the date set for our group’s weekly meetings on Monday at 4:30pm which was now a day used for all other groups to join and could still be used. Next we talked about whether zoom meetings were recorded and if they could be used to help populate the “minutes with the advisor” as we were lacking on material that could be used to write down, the professor then clarified that our group needs to be more organized in knowing how critical those meetings are coupled with the fact that they are online and not face to face meaning we would have to delegate the responsibilities of every task which includes taking notes from each meeting in the future. We then talked about whether we could make additions to our projects, to which the professor said that there was room to change it for the better but any new enhancements added would have to avoid sacrificing any of the previously approved features. Likewise we asked if we could changed a feature of the glove to act as a keyboard for an iphone using bluetooth and whether we could use a potentiometer to generate the letters and punctuation, feedback from the professor was that he would need more technical details and a block diagram of the changes coupled with how it would affect our budget schedule, etc before a decision could be made. We also wanted to add a voice assist to help guide the user to pick the language used for translation, it was then decided with the professor that the united nations languages were a good choice and that no more than 3-5 should suffice, and that since the microcontroller used only worked with English text we would have to contact the manufacturer and ask if other languages could be written on board the chip. The professor then talked about how we could start looking into purchasing options for the project and that any new enhancements needed to be reviewed and decided before the deadline of June 15th. Lastly we talked about how any major literature or information used in helping us research any aspects of the design in our project should be included and that videos should be embedded on the website itself instead of links.

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• 7th Week (6/15/20)

This meeting happened over Zoom and the biggest point of discussion was the new changes we've been working on to try to get the product into it's final complete form. As a group we had been talking over adding a shoe as well as the glove to serve a similar function but adapted to the foot to be used by those disabled in a way that makes them unable to use their hands. When the shoe was added to the block diagram the handheld device was taken off, the professor advised us against that as it's important to have a main module that handles the data while the glove and shoe act as additions to it. At this point the decision is to focus on the handheld device and the glove and leave the shoe for the end if there is time, as the population of people that are both blind and handless is very low. The other new addition to the product is a headset to handle the text to speech function, as well as the possibility of a voice assistance feature that can help the user use the product. The professor liked this idea so as it stands the handheld device, the glove, and the headset are where our focus will be. Next we went through the website to see if it was progressing as it should. The professor said that overall the website was very well made but there were cosmetic issues with things like tables having unnecessary white space, as well as cutting off in strange places. We also discussed Power Budgets, determining how much power each component will require compared to how much we are supplying. It is important to create a Power Budget based on the specific needs of the product, rather than just looking at what each component can handle. Lastly the professor made it clear that it's time we finalize figuring out the scope of what we need to do, and making sure that it can be handled by the three of us is the time we have left.

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• 8th Week(6/22/20)

This week we had a meeting with the professor on a zoom call where we talked about updating the engineering requirement table to fix the amount of space in between the chart, one of the solutions was saving a word document as a pdf file to fix the formatting errors we have seen. We also talked about making changes to the work schedule to map out the planned work each group member will due in the following week. This also compliments the progress log in which the professor pointed out that whatever work that is planned in the work schedule needs to be written down there in a detailed manner to show what was learned. We also talked about how the minutes with the advisor needed to be changed to half the average amount to be more concise. Furthermore, we talked about changing the title for the project so it stood for something and went over the report to change page number formatting and went over the order of acknowledgement and who to credit.

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• 9th Week(6/29/20)

This week we had a meeting with the professor on canvas chat and talked about various topics. The first thing talked about was changing our product name from SIGLO to IGAD which stand for integrated glove assistant device, the professor told us that we have to be sure this is the final name change to our project as it had to be updated on the main department website. We also asked him about the power budget table and asked for clarification on hardware such as headsets which we learned can be disregarded since it does not have a specific current, voltage or power associated with it. We then asked about the presentation and learned that we have 25-30 minutes to detail what in the report but Is up to us in what order and content we put in it. The professor then told us to focus on finishing the project report by early next week and that we should update the website daily to keep him updated. Lastly we talked about the removal of the shoe device and were reminded that any changed need to be shared, discussed, and decided before any approval, we then informed the professor that based on our research that Blind without hand is very rare . Likewise we were told to think of another option to replace the shoe that would fit the scope of a 3 person project and would have to develop a new block diagram, reasons, Engineering Specifications, budget, etc. before the professor could approve of the change.

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