Week 4: June 2nd - June 8th

Individual Log - Zach

Initial goals for the week were to finalize the thermostat enclosure design and prepare it for 3D printing, however, priorities were pushed into BLE code development for the thermostat so that testing, further troubleshooting, and assembly could begin. Most of the week was spent familiarizing myself with the ArduinoBLE library, experimenting with Arduino examples using BLE with the assistance of an app named LightBlue, and eventually writing code and troubleshooting it until a thorough understanding of what exactly would be needed to pass values from a virtual peripheral to the central (thermostat MCU). Most of the initial development consisted of using the serial monitor to verify BLE module activation, connectivity, and characteristic discovery. Once a successful and consistent connection was obtained, values were updated on the virtual peripheral as notifications (primarily done this way since the valve enclosure will be continuously updating data), and verified with the serial monitor. Once this was successful, the LiquidCrystal_I2C and Wire libraries were added to this test program to create a mock up of these notified values displayed on the LCD screen. Some effort was put into implementing the warnings system around this new program, but still has some faults which are planned to be resolved before the next group meeting. Currently, all that remains for proper and full BLE implementation is integrating the test BLE program with existing thermostat code, and creating a function with the BLE library that allows the set_temp variable (controlled by the potentiometer) to write a new value for the valve enclosures characteristic.

Testing BLE communication a virtual peripheral on LightBlue.

Additional efforts were put into uploading all content that has been photographed or filmed to my google drive so that it can be edited/spliced and uploaded to YouTube for embedding videos to the website, and learning from Altium's PCB design course.

Goals for next week are full implementation of BLE code and finalization of the Thermostat's programming, completion of Thermostat enclosure design and potentially a test 3D print, and development of the user/installation manuals structure.