Inspiration
Jasmine is a Mechatronics Postgraduate who develops sensors for coursework. She must test her sensors every time she adds new features to it. Without automation, it takes her 2 days to just find what's wrong! We decided to build a program that finds and presents all the issues with her sensors in a webpage, as our project for the Catalyst Hackathon.
What it does
Our program collects sensor data from the Arduino IDE. We have written C++ code in the IDE. This code generates information about the wiring on the sensor. We store this generated data into a database to record and maintain historical data. Our website then queries this data and presents the arisen sensor issues to the user.
How we built it
We used Python, HTML, C++, Arduino IDE and an MCU to make this possible. \ When the MCU is plugged into the USB port, code is compiled and executed in Arduino IDE. \ This code is read from the USB port using socket programming in Python \ We further use Python to store this data in a database \ We have developed a webpage using flask library from Python \ The webpage take the sensor Id as an input and outputs all historical and present data of the sensor on it.
Challenges we ran into
\ We had a high level overview of our idea but did not know what software to use. We also were unfamiliar with using any of these technologies and how to connect or integrate them. \ We wanted to use a PostgreSQL DB, and we set one up, we did not have the time to integrate the PostgreSQL DB into the workflow. Instead we have used an excel spreadsheet.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
At several points, we struggled to understand the different technologies and learn to use them, especially, reading live data off the sensors. We are proud we managed to pull it off, and learnt to code a website from scratch.
What we learned
We learnt to use PostgreSQL, Arduino IDE and Python Flask. We also learned to build a website.
What's next for The Sensor Tester
Right now, The Sensor Tester works just for Jasmine. We haven't built the functionality for multiple users to connect to their sensors and receive a rundown of errors. For our next steps, we will first integrate our PostgreSQL DB into the workflow. Next, we will work on the functionality to incorporate multiple users. Then we will provide new features on the webpage to allow users to explore and interpret the data in custom ways.
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