Week 5

Welcome to week 5! As we had mentioned last week, progress for week 5 was expected to be minimal so that we could focus on our presentation. However, some good progress was made!

Firmware:

There was a lot of productivity in the firmware department this week. We were able to get all of the BLE characteristics sent to the phone and read or wrote to in the CySmart app. In addition, timing was optimized for low latency/no timeouts when connecting our smart phone to the PS0C as well as ensuring sensors were given enough time to send readings. Features were also added to put the sensors to sleep if no device was connected to the PS0C to save power. Options are being explored into other methods to conserve power, such as lowering the frequency that the PSoC advertises over BLE and putting the BLE module to sleep when not advertising. The firmware is essentially finished for a basic working model. Other features such as automatically turning the light on/off are being considered, and would require extra code in the future. We are waiting to do any sensor data conversions until our phone app is finished, and will perhaps do the conversions on the front end instead.

PCB Design:

This week we were able to finish up our PCB design for the relay switch and send it off for fab. We are hoping it works; its a relatively simple circuit design and oh how embarrassing it would be if it didn't work.

Relay Board Design:

This is the board design for the relay switch.

Relay Schematic:

This is the schematic for our relay board. Its a very simple design; the transistor helps boost the current, since the GPIO of the board cannot supply enough power to switch the relay. Diode is there to prevent voltage spikes caused by the solenoid due to switching.

Software:

This week we were also able to get our Swift iOS app to connect to the PsoC. This is actually great news because it is our first time writing in Swift and any progression is good progression! We are also working on the UI as well, and should have pics of mock ups in the next week or so.

Relay Enclosure:

Lastly, we 3D printed our first relay enclosure! There are a couple things that we decided to add to the next revision, such as a larger hole for the indicator light to shine through as well as venting on the side for cooling.

Next Week:

Next week we plan to get our main PCB up and running, or at least debugged for the most part. We should have the board populated and being testing within the next few days. More efforts will be spent on the phone app in hopes of being able to read data in the next week or two. Lastly, we will be working on designing an enclosure for the main board as well. As all of these tasks will take a while to complete, next weeks progress may be a little sparse, but that just means that weeks to come will be even more exciting!