Week 1

Overview of Activities

We started our first lab day by collecting our components from the lab technicians. We checked that everything had arrived and, to our surprise, we had too many components. In retrospect, it was unnecessary to order two power supplies and two sensors, etc.; However, since we were new to these kinds of projects, we were very concerned about components getting damaged, or anything else going wrong. This greatly increased the amount of money spent on the components. Thankfully, our supervisor had convinced us against ordering a backup raspberry pi! As it was too expensive to justify. Furthermore, we had ordered two servo motors, to control the horizontal and vertical inclination of the rotating platform, on which the camera would be mounted; however, we found out on the lab day that the rotating platform itself came with two servos, integrated within it, so we wouldn't need to use the external servos.


We started by opening different boxes and familiarising ourselves with the different components. Without wasting any time, we started making the electronic connections between different components, in no particular order, and the raspberry-pi board. We started by connecting the raspberry pi camera module, which used a magnetic ribbon to communicate with the pi; as this connection was unique, we thought we would get it out of the way first. Next we connected the two servo motors, followed by the RGB sensor, to appropriate pins on the raspberry pi in order to establish I2C communication. Meanwhile, one member of the group started setting up his laptop with the relevant software, as well as flashing the SD card, which would be used to communicate with, and, control the pi. With the pi powered on, using the purpose-built raspberry pi 4 power supply, he was able to connect the pi to to his phone's internet and install OpenCV on it. Moreover, this project would use python code written in the 'Thonny' IDE.



Challenges

  • By the end of the day, some group members tried to test the camera but were unable to get it to work.
  • Initially, we planned to use the pi 4 power supply to power the pi and all other components, except the two servos, which would have been powered by an external power supply. To do this, we wanted to connect that external power supply to the pi (or so we thought at the time). However, this power supply had a 'barrel end', while the pi would only accept a USB-C connection; this meant that we would need an adaptor. Having looked it up, we thought it was quite cheap, and, to avoid the delay due to ordering a new component, we decided to buy it ourselves. Some group members left the lab to look for this adaptor in nearby stores, but to no avail. At the end, having taken advice from one of the lab demonstrators, we decided to just power everything using the single raspberry pi power supply, plugged into the wall socket, and see how it goes.
  • We struggled a bit to understand the colour coding of the sensor's jumper wires; especially for the SDA and SCL connections. After some online searches, we ended up following a source that claimed to describe the company's colour coding for its wires. The LEDs on the sensor lit up, so we decided to go with these connections, until we could test the sensor later.

Reflections

  1. We should have planned more carefully in the initial stages to  avoid ordering more components than we needed.
  2. We should have had a more structured plan, dictating the order at which different features of our project would be implemented and tested. Instead, we ended up focusing too much on the hardware and adding components before code could be written to test them.

Tasks for next Meeting/Lab

  1. Discuss responsibilities
  2. Review project management forms
  3. Get the camera to work and display its output on the controlling laptop's screen.
  4. Experiment with the servos to understand how they work.
  5. Find a way to attach the camera and sensor to the rotating platform and attempt to assemble the whole project neatly.

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