It finally here. The last day of the last week! Within a few days I'll be on a plane headed back home. Its crazy to think that this is the end. It's been a long but productive 10 weeks. As I take my leave we have more or less decided on a prototype, we just need to order supplies and start build. Unfortunately I will not be a part of the prototyping phase, its kind of hard to build something when you aren't actually there, but I'm eager to see how it goes and to help remotely if I can. I can't imagine I'll be able to be much help with the prototype of the sensor node, but I look forward to possibly being able to assist with the organization of the data we collect and figuring out how we go about displaying our data to the public. Whether or not I end up being of help beyond this point I'm still very excited about the work I've done and the work that will be done in the future. Now with that being said its time for me to go back to finishing my paper so I can hurry up and get back home. Its been fun. Roll Tide!
Week 9 has come and gone and there's plenty of work to be done. I wrote the majority of the first draft of my paper this week. I'm hoping to have this draft revised soon so that I can prepare to turn in everything at the conclusion of my REU. Our project has made a little project this week. We recently found a sensor that we think will allow us to take two different kinds of measurements. This led to us reconsidering our design, if we could use this sensor we wouldn't have any need for our current temperature sensor. My colleague scouted out a few different parts we would need to build our first real prototype. We are pretty sure we will be using cellular signals to transmit our data and have decide we will also want to add a barometric pressure sensor to our design as well. It seems like we are getting closer and closer to having a prototype to test and while it may not be complete before I leave for the summer, its still very exciting. Check out the illustration bellow to get an idea of what we are trying to build.
Week 8 has come to an end, man time really does fly. This past week was a bit slow, me and my colleagues decided to get together to come up with a list of priorities to keep us busy these next two weeks. We hope to finalize a design and have a prototype built before my 10 weeks are up but this may not be realistic, it depends on how quickly we can order parts and get them here. So far throughout this whole experience the tricky thing has been figuring out what we want to use. Originally we worked with the temperature sensor but had no real solution for depth sensing that was cost effective. Now we believe we may have found a sensor that will take care of both our temperature and depth measurements. If we decide to use this sensor for these measurements then all we will need to do is come up with a solution for the water proof enclosure and we will be close to having a functional prototype that we could start testing. With two weeks left it will be interesting to see what more we can get done.
This week was a bit of a short one, by Thursday much of the building was empty in preparation of the holiday. All of our lab people showed up Thursday but most of us took Friday off. Anyway, on Wednesday of this week we had the opportunity to take a little field trip out to a few different sections of the Sipsey river that we hope to deploy our devices to. We unfortunately didn't have much equipment to bring out with us to test, the main thing holding us back in that regard is the lack of a solution for water proofing, and the fact that we have yet to finalize how our communications will work. We were able to test the availability of cellular networking at the sites and were pleasantly surprised to find that we will have more access to cellular communication than we previously thought. This will hopefully allow us to transmit our data along the river areas where cellular communication is strong in order to get it out of the river and into a database. We have been flirting with the idea of sending the data in text messages. This works well in theory since currently the sensor that I have put together writes the data it collects into simple text files on an SD card. Eventually I envision a system in which we have the sensors collect data, save it to an SD card for safe keeping and then immediately transmit it through our network and return to sleep mode. This way we will be able to update our data in real time but also save that data in case there is some sort of complication.
Next week I am hoping to finally do some tests on the power consumption of the sensor I have put together, comparing its normal consumption to that consumption when it utilizes sleep mode and the other optimizations I've made. Additionally there's more work that needs to be done with the wireless communication, waterproofing, and of course dept sensing. Not all of this will get done within the next few weeks but hopefully we can at least make a good amount of progress on the wireless communication. I've also got a paper I need to start writing. Lots of work to do. Until next week! |
AuthorThis blog is authored by me, Omar White. Learn more about me here Archives
September 2015
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