LED Weather Mapper

This week 2 meetings were held and the group made more progress on the project. The first draft of the lab script was started on and posters from previous years were looked at for ideas on what our poster should look like and ideally consist of. The program for retrieving twitter data is still being developed (it is going well) and some useful Arduino libraries for working with twitter API were found. A random number generator was programmed in the Arduino environment so its outputs affect the LEDs display and although the outputs aren't affecting the LED displays yet, the number generator itself is working. The Arduino can provide enough power for all 8 displays and drivers to run and the individual LEDs within the displays can be manipulated like shown. in the picture below: Next week we hope to have finalised the project with all the codes and LED displays working perfectly with the Arduino and the lab script and poster finished.  

This week the group had 3 meetings and made progress on the Tweet Mapper.  This weeks progress: 1. The LEDs were powered and and a code was developed to light up specific LEDs.  2. The code that interfaces with the twitter API was developed and we were able to successfully get locations based off tweets from a keyword.  3. The casing of the project, with the map of the UK included, was made using Fusion360  4. A plan for the lab script was made.   A program was made to count through every LED of a cascaded strip of 4 matrices. The Arduino can only process one loop at a time because it uses a single threaded processor so it requires a programming technique called 'protothreading'.  Picture of casing: Picture of lit LED powered by Arduino:  Tasks for next week: 1. Begin first draft of lab script  2. Get casing printed and lasered  3. Begin PCB design  4. Integrate the code with the circuit and have functioning prototype. 

This week the group had four meetings (one with a supervisor) to discuss the beginning stages and basic ideas for the project. Our initial plan was to make a satellite tracker using LED matrix to track the satellites passing over the England (and Ireland) but we encountered a problem as the RGB LED Matrix we had was too complex for  the drivers we ordered. So we consulted with our supervisor and decided to change the project to an LED Tweet Mapper. The aim of this project is to allow users search up a keyword, for example football, on a keyboard or hashtag and the LED Tweet Mapper will find any tweets with said keyword on twitter and show on the map where these tweets were made. Below is a sketch of the basic circuit diagram: We also decided upon our roles during one of our meetings this week which are: Project manager - Skye Designer - Charley Implementer - Aaron Technical writer - Ayanfe   Some limitations to this project may be:  1. How ma...