Nearly There

Ok im way behind on my blogging so heres what i've been up to. Fixed the problem i was having with the LCD. Its now displaying the cues. From an implementation point of view im pretty much done. I think i might make a few changes to the python code but nothing major. I also want to tidy up the website and the way cues are displayed, again only a few small changes. I'll get this done Saturday. Final draft of report is due Friday so i've a few things to finish this evening. Tomorrow i've to get the final evaluation done and added to the report along with a data flow diagram. Hopefully that will be the final draft done. Wish me luck :-)

Pouch

Ok got the pouch finished today, which somehow took hours. Sewing is really hard. Also soldered the circuit and went to hook up everything but ran into a slight snag. Ok so theres two serial ports on the gumstix, one for the LCD and one for RFID reader. Reader only works on second one for some reason so i had to use the first for the LCD but it turns out when the gumstix boots up it outputs its startup messages on the first port, which looks like crazy code on the screen, so i tried getting them both to work off the second port but no luck. I decided then to just have two different batteries one for reader and gumstix, powering gumstix will just be for demos and stuff if i dont want it plugged in all the time, then second battery powers the screen. Turning on the screen seperatly avoids the crazy output when the gumstix boots. Ok thats fine for now however there seems to be something funny going on with the code now. RFID stuff works but not all messages are being sent to the screen. I cant see whats wrong at all. I'll give my brain a break from it and take another look tomorrow. Will make a short survey like thing before i go to bed about the cues evaluation and get some people to do it tomorrow.

LCD update

Finished off a spot of coding today. The LCD will now display the time and date of when u last had something. It does this in a loop. The screen only gives 32 characters, and doesnt scroll which i initially thought, so the info it displays is fairly simple. Just the item with the date and time of when u last had it. The only thing left to do with this is to solder its circuit properly. I'll do this next week when im making the pouch. Also want to look into getting the LCD backlight working, not that its really important but it looks better. It works for its self testing setting but not when i send data to it. I think i recall seeing a list of codes online somewhere to make it do different things so i'll have a look for this. I finished off my second draft of the report today and sent it to Graeme. For next week i want to do the survey for the readable cues evaluation, make the pouch and test it, and also now that i have a bit extra time left i will take another look into the bluetooth and see if i can get it workin. Wish me luck!

Progress... Finally!!

Ok finally a good day. I started off today writing a C program to open the Gumstix's serial port and send data to the LCD. Was'nt too bad in the end, thanks for the sample code Steve, and seemed to be running fine but nothing was being displayed on screen? I was testing this on fedora 6 first because you cant compile anything on the Gumstix. Anyway i decided to just try the code on the gumstix but it didnt like it one bit. Before fixing this i decided to make sure data was actually getting to the screen. I went over the circuit again and it turned out i had the transistor the wrong way round. The LCD was still being powered so i didnt realise. Anyway i fixed this and tested it by just echoing strings to the serial port. The screens cursor seemed to react so i figured it was getting data now. Just for the craic i thought i'd try python again because it connects to the serial and sends data in just two lines of code, and also you can set the correct connection bit rate which might have had something to do with echo not really working. Well anyway it worked!! Its also super handy that i can use python because i can edit the python script which processes tag reads to also send data to the screen. Im just not sure yet what actual info im gonna display???? :-/

Update

Ok just a quick update on whats happening. The bluetooth work is going on hold for the moment as its proven very difficult to find a stable buildroot with wireless and bluetooth capabilities. I have a backup plan for later if theres time. Started work on the LCD screen. It was pretty straightforward to bulid the circuit for connecting it however programming with it has proven difficult. I initially tried python with pySerial but didnt get any results. Im going to try C next which i was going to work on today however i forgot that the lab computers have security on the serial ports in Linux. It seems serial ports are a security risk in linux and you can use it to access data. Nevermind i can work on it tomorrow at home. This has given me time to work on my report and i should be pretty much finished my second draft today. I also took some time to get some feedback on what i could call my system. This was less productive...
Suggestions so far are:

• The Colinator
• Find your crap if you lose it machine
• Come find with Colin
• Find that bitch
• Colon
• Find me
• Locate -"This already exists :-/"

A big thanks to everyone for their amazing suggestions...

Still going bald

Ok i think everything that could possibly go wrong at this point has gone wrong so its all up hill from here lol. Had some trouble flashing buildroot yesterday. First filesystem didnt work but i think thats because i didnt pick right format for gumstix. Second one was too big, it has to be less than 16mb. Finally have a proper one just need to flash it over. The annoying thing is all these things take hours. Had to leave buildroot running all night. It also didnt help that my laptop decided to stop working half way through all this. It turns out if the root folder is completely full, then linux cant boot properly. On the plus side i know how to flash the filesystem correctly now, its incredibly simple using hyperterminal in windows, which is what i had anyway to begin with. Aghhh! Ok deep breaths... :-) Also i updated uboot so thats much easier for flashing file system now. Also i had time to go over programming with bluetooth and python again and it seems very straightforward. So for today i need a break from this and will concentrate on my report, but am still determined to get the bluetooth part finished by tomorrow or thursaday!

Tearing my hair out :-)

Ok my goal today was to install the new file system on the gumstix. I built the file system ok then ran into problems when it came to flashing it to the Gumstix. The method i was going to use was to flash it from the cf card however it doesn't work. This seems to be due to the version of u-boot installed on the Gumstix. This can be updated but theres lots of warnings that it would seriously mess up the gumstix if it goes wrong so im not doin that. Next option is to flash it over serial. My laptop does'nt have a serial connection so i decided to put linux on my pc. Installed ok but then i could'nt use the monitor because it turns out there is some driver conflict or problem with nvidia graphics cards. Its very hard to use computers without monitors. Grrrr! Anyway what i then did was install a virtual machine in xp and am loading a linux image on it. Of course it doesn't have kermit installed. I feel like i've been here before hmmmm. I've lost the will to live at this point so i'll come back to it :-)

Meeting/ Work schedule

Had a meeting yesterday with Lorcan, Steve, and Graeme to talk about the interim report and the project. We talked about how there will be four drafts for the final report. My first one will go to Lorcan, next two to Steve and Graeme and final draft to Lorcan. I've started working on my first draft and am hoping to have it ready by next Tuesday or Wednesday. We discussed the presentations briefly, which will be worked on in the final week after reports are handed in. I also got a spare wifistix and console-st from Lorcan. Unfortunately there was no spare Gumstix but this shouldn't be a problem. I'm currently working on installing the new file system on the Gumstix but it takes some time so I'll blog later on how it turns out. If this goes well im hoping to have the Bluetooth component finished also by next Tuesday or Wednesday. This will give me plenty of time to work with the LCD screen which im guessing will be the trickiest part overall. Heres my workplan:

• 1st April - 9th April: Bluetooth component and first report draft. If Bluetooth component cant be completed by the 9th I will continue working on it until the 13th.
  
• 10th April - 27th April: LCD component. If I need more time on this I can continue working up until the 4th of May.
• 13th April - 17th April: Second report Draft
• 20th April - 24th April: Third report draft
• 28th April - 8th May: Work on final draft
• 8th May - 15th: Presentation preparation
  

The time periods for completing report drafts are somewhat flexible. My aim is to do at least half an hour work on the report each working day.

Its that time again

Ok its been a while since i've been blogging so here's a big update. So theres roughly bout 5 weeks left to get the project done and i've set myself four main goals. First is to use the Gumstixs bluetooth to keep track of interactions with people based in their phone id and also locations in the form of static bluetooth nodes, more on this later! Next will be to do something clever with a built in screen, need to give this more thought on what exactly it will do which i'll decide once the bluetooth is setup. Also I need to go back to the cues and the website and fix them up with the new data and stuff, maybe add some frills to it if theres time. Last thing is getting the report finished :-)

I've been working on the bluetooth component for the last few days and ran into a few problems. First of all using python it should be quite simple to take in bluetooth ID'd as variables then trnsmit them the same way as the tag reads to the server. Problem is the current
gumstix configuration or filesystem does'nt have certain components i need, which are needed to use bluetooth API in python. After fighting with my laptop a little i have buildroot installed which i'll use to make a new filesystem with all the things i need and send it to the Gumstix. I really didnt want to dabble with buildroot but its actually not so scary now that i've gotten a chance to play with it. I'll get a second gumstix off Lorcan tomorrow so i can do this without making a mess of the Gumstix i already have. Hopefully it will all work well, only problem I can see is setting up the existing code for reading tag data on the new Gumstix so that it still works ok. Wish me luck!