week 4

 

This is the last week dedicated to working on the project properly,  as next week is the bench inspection week where supervisors will look at our project, poster, blog etc.  This week the usual group meetings were met and as usual good progress was made. this weeks notes and progress:

1. the casing prototype was printed and delivered. An image of the prototype is shown below:

2. the wifi module for the Arduino arrived but it doesn't work with any software

3. the wrong pcb was delivered, it has the right chip but wrong pcb, so a new one has been ordered. 

4. The  random number generator works to find each display depending on the output, there was an issue. with lighting the number the LED correlates to within each display but this has been sorted out now.

An issue getting the ESP where codes can be compiled but cannot be uploaded was encountered. 

We realised that using an Arduino and separate WiF module was quite difficult to program. This combined with the fact that the Arduino's ram and main memory are limited led us to switching to using a 'nodeMCU ESP8266 12E'. This board has the same WiFi module we intended to use but. it comes as a fully integrated system on a chip that has very similar functionality to the Arduino. Yet it has more ram and significantly more main memory. 

Picture of the board we settled on:

Hopefully by next week, the project is complete and working properly with the poster and lab script also complete in time for the bench inspection.