Week #9: July 7th - July 13th

Individual Log - Zach

I started this week by creating final software flow charts for the thermostat and adding them to the report. Flowchart creation involved closely following Prof. Young's slideshow examples as well as his personal advice from email conversations and review of my charts. These final versions can be seen below:

After completing the flow charts, I began troubleshooting bluetooth code following some issues that arose with connection to the valve regulator on Wednesday. After several hours I put the additions to the test by placing the thermostat in a wall outlet near my sink, and placing a 2nd MCU with the valve regulator's BLE code under the counter. A for loop value update routine was used to verify not only the operation of the displayed values, but the triggering of warnings, bluetooth capabilities between obstacles, and simulate power outages or a dead valve battery. Testing was a success as all values continued to update in 500ms intervals, trigger warnings when expected, display them and play a chime. Bluetooth connectivity proved to be robust and while viewing the serial monitor occurs instantaneously, although there is short 20-30 second delay because of characteristic discovery.

After successful BLE testing, the group gathered for its weekly meetup to test and improve the Smart Water Faucet project. I provided Conner with finalized valve regulator BLE code that I'd revised earlier in the week, and we were able to test and verify most functions of the project. There were some errors and bugs to note, but these are being worked on and will be tested on Wednesday. Below is a video of the thermostat receiving values from the valve regulator's MCU in real-time.

After our group meeting, I made significant progress and contributions to the report from Thursday - Saturday, which includes the organization and editing of Chapter 1; adding additional components to Chapter 2 and editing some outdated information; writing in all of my contributions to Chapter 3 (excluding verifications and summaries); creating/editing/formatting/adding to tables in Chapter 4 such as proposed and actual budget, GANTT charts, weekly timelines, and proposed and actual task distribution; final (actual) power consumption measurements for the thermostat obtained with a multimeter; reorganization of the references list; and adding code screen shots to Appendix C.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tSFfaETcI2nxrbHMcqvXdmyM0sakPOkqkedrEqyokSE/edit?usp=sharing

To end the week, I took these videos of everything I'm currently capable of showing with the thermostat until the code for the valve regulator is finalized and debugged.