Author: gacosta

Week 1 of 2017

Hello my friends and welcome back to a New Year with new expectations about how the Clemson (Machinery) Access Tracking System (CATS) project will continue for the Spring of 2017 semester.

This year the creative inquiry team decided to take a new approach on how we wanted to separate the tasks for the project. We ended up creating three teams that consist of Hardware, Web Administration, and Software (Raspberry Pi Coding, SQL server components, and more…).

Over Christmas break of 2016, one of the members of the team decided to take a Raspberry Pi home to fix a problem or bug that the needed fixing. This one problem was having the Invalid PIN re-entered if the user had entered an incorrect PIN. Not only was this issue solved, but the member added a signal interrupt that lets the system lock the user out if they have not typed in something within a certain time or if the card is no longer being read, for now this timer is set at 7 seconds.

With that being said, there are a few goals that the three teams are going to tackle this semester.

Hardware

  • Redesign Housing
  • Solve Connectivity Issues
  • Improve User Interface and Feedback
  • Integrate Relay Into Design of PCB
  • Integrate Physical Safety Features such as Captive Ends for Power Supply

Software

  • Complete Unit Testing
  • Improve Quality of Code
  • Fix/Reduce Bugs Found
  • Implement the Software Development Life Cycle
    • This step will be put into effect when the team gets close to the finished product
  • Implement *Optional* Two-factor Authentication
  • Add Audio Effects

Web Administration

  • Home page with Administrator Login
  • Database Calling
  • Machine Control Panel
  • Data Metrics Panel

That is all for this week’s blog. Thank you for your time. Hope to see you all back soon.

‘We’re the CATS Team and we approve this message.’

Week 9

Hello my friends. Another week another challenge!

This week the software team had to tackle a few challenges. These challenges consisted of connecting to a server, converting the code into a script that runs on boot, and looking into RAM issues from the Raspberry Pi running indefinitely. The software team was only able to tackle the challenge of connecting to a server only by connecting the Pi through Ethernet and was also able to use it for authentication. In other words, the User’s card is scanned, and is then asked for a PIN. If the user exists and the PIN is good, then the user is able to turn on power, otherwise, re-enter PIN.

Going deeper into the software:

When the python code for the Pi is compiled, the user has 3 seconds to place their card on the card scanner before the program terminates. Software team is working on having the card reader input stay alive until the user decides to take their card off of the card scanner and back on, at their leisure. Challenges keep being presented whenever the software team changes some of the code. For example: when code is compiled and user enters the database successfully, then power is turned on, but the power only turns on for 2 seconds until it shuts off and exits the program. This is one of the problems the team is working on fixing.

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The Hardware Team talks about Bill of Materials

The hardware team also had a few challenges to tackle. These challenges consisted of drawing a housing design for the PCB, writing a first draft of poster for the upcoming ISAM event, and creating a Pi case. The team also talked about bill of materials. They discussed the pricing values of RFID Reader, Rasberry Pi 3, Power tail 2, power cord, SD Card, Tall Pi Header, RGB LEDs, and PCB was added to the list, but no pricing details because the team does not have final pricing of it.

Both the hardware and the software team are working together to get the software and the product up and running for ISAM. The teams are trying to get the bugs out and most of the minor and some of the major problems and challenges that the teams have encountered fixed before ISAM.

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Hardware and Software teams working on code and looking at Bill of Materials before ISAM comes around

So far the teams doing a great job working together to get it all done!

That will be all for this week my friends. Hope to see you all back for next week’s blog.