Time for an update

More than two weeks has passed since the last time the blog was updates. The last post was about the last preparations we made before the prototype review. We made it on time, and Tim and Kaj were overall satisfied with our prototype. Of course there were still things to be done before it was really good, and that is what we have done the last two weeks.
Now the web part is up and running, ERAIS uploads data about the sitting position to our webserver. The user is able to look at charts about the sitting position as well a get a detailed time line showing when the position has been good and bad. 

In last week we worked on a few small details on the physical prototype but our main focus was to write the fifth hand-in. The weather was quite a distraction factor but even though the sun was shining every day we managed to work on the project every day. 

In this week we have worked on getting a appointment with Stefanshjemmet to test our prototype there with a helper and a roof-mounted lift. The first part of the week we made the prototype even better looking and wrote on the sixth hand-in. Today we went to Stefanshjemmet to test ERAIS and that went very well. They were really exited about the product and they had never seen a product like ERAIS before. The caretaker helping us at Stefanshjemmet even said that she would like to order 12 pieces already if it was possible. Cool! 

That gave us a lot of extra energy and we've already finished the sixth hand-in. 

  

Much has happened since the last blog update! We now have two days left to work on our product untill there's show off time for Kaj and Tim friday. Søren G and Alex has been assigned to work on the arduino-part of our project - getting the LEDs to light according to specific pressure on pressure sensors. They have also worked on the physical design of our product. So far, the display has been made and the seat is still to be formed. Trial and error for finding the right LED's as well as finding the right resistance has been made.
The use of wireless communication from the arduino board to our database has been downprioritzed in favour of finishing the physical design and getting the product ready for show off friday.

Søren D. and I have been working on the web-tech part of the project. We have designed a homepage with statistics for the staff so an overview of the sitting habbit of a given resident can be presented. The big challenge has been to set up our own database using MySQL, as this is something we have not done before. Getting the database to communicate with our web-services as well as incorporating that into the Google Charts has been a great challenge. The graphical design of our webpage, the CSS, has taken a lot of time to write but has not been esspecially technically challenging.

Automatically update of the MySQL database with the data (pressure intensities) parsed from arduino is the number objective to get to work at the moment. We hope this will be achieved today, so thursday can be used to polish the features of our product which currently work.

Below 2 pictures of the LED's and display design is presented.

/D

Week 19

This week we were really excited to get started because we thought we could go straight to the product building phase. Unfortunately Kaj dropped by monday and asked us to clarify our two last rapports. It was specifically the presentation of our data he thought was unclear I.e the wheelchair mounted display and the web-interface. Most of Monday went with rethinking and redesigning, which was not all bad cuz it helped us specify what we wanted. Luckily we were more or less ready to start building Tuesday - HOORAY! So far we have assembled our Arduino board, and we are currently in the process of learning how we can control LEDS though pressure sensors as well as manipulating the date in JAVA.
On the website  part of the project we have begun to write our CSS, and it is looking good so far.

Summary of this week

It is now Sunday evening, and I just realized that none of us have updated the blog this week.
Since last Thursday where i wrote the last post, a few important things have happened.
Friday was a short day after the great dinner we had the night before, and we decided to go off for an early weekend. But we also agreed to meet at my place Sunday to work on the third hand-in.
Sunday we met at 10 and had a "roundpiece" ;) Me and Søren D made a lot of drawings and illustrations on the computer, while Daniel and Alex wrote most of the text. We actually nearly finished the hand-in, but we needed to talk with one of the teachers about our software and webtech part before we could write the third part of the hand-in.
Monday none of the teachers had time to talk to us, but we discussed a lot of things about the design which was good, because we clearly had completely different ideas about the visual appearance of the final product.
Tuesday was kind of another discussion day because still none of the teachers had time to talk with us (!!). But we made a few additional perspective drawings to illustrate the product.
Finally Wednesday we talked with two of the teachers and found out that we need an Arduino board with a WiFi shield to communicate with our server and a few other small things.
Because of the "Kapsejlads" Thursday was a day off, and friday Daniel had to go home to a Confirmation, so it was a short week.
Tomorrow another week starts, and we will have a lot of work to do. We know that we get busy!

Lights out, words gone.

- Søren G

Group therapy

Yesterday we finished our second hand-in. Afterwards we decided to do some group therapy and therefore went home to Søren to drink some wine. At 8 o'clock we walked to "Nordisk Folkekøkken", a really nice restaurant in the city, and here we had a wonderful three courses dinner with more wine. All the good food made us so happy, and what made us even happier was the beers we had at a pub after the dinner. A nice end of a relaxing and cozy night.

Today we did not meet before 11 o'clock, and it was only the three of us who managed to get out of bed. Alex is getting old so he had to sleep all day after having a blast the day before. 

Daniel, Søren and I chilled out today and talked about our next hand-in as well as how we should built our prototype. We decided to meet on Sunday to write and make drawings of our prototype.

- Søren G

Pictures of the great food we had at "Nordisk Folkekøkken"

Assignment Writing

Today we met at Alex's place to continue the work on our 'design concept description.' We're now done with part a,b & c and have begun writing part d & e. The work ethic has been great today. Tomorrow we will meet in Chomsky Lab to decide the technical details for our product (part e) as well as finishing our ”Business Model Canvas” (Alexander Osterwalder) for ERAIS, which is the name for our system. This Business Model combined with a short description of our Business Case will form part d. 

Although we've worked hard, relaxation was had too. In times of being busy, recreation is the savior of sanity (which might be spotted in the picture below).

Elaboration day

Yesterday we decided that our final product will be a monitoring seat for the wheel chair to monitor the seating position. Today we have tried to specify this product by making requirements and cleared our expectations to the product. Some drawings has been made to support our statements as well as a single mapping showing the connection between the parts in the complete product. We have discussed which interface would be best according to get out the information recorded by the sensors and have come to the conclusion that it is a small panel with LED lights in a grid illustrating the surface of the sensor pad.
Furthermore we have started out writing our second hand-in.
Tomorrow we will work from Alexanders apartment because we think the working environment in Chomsky is really bad.