Tom 5.3.2012

Start: 10:40

  • Assembled a secondary connector for the sensors so Phil can test his stuff independently of the main electronic boards
  • Started making changes to the board design.
  • Added a power switch
  • Added mounting holes
  • Sent the negative input signal to ground to fix that feedback problem.
  • Considering a single board approach for the new boards now that I know the electronics will work.

End 6:40

Mike 5.3.12

  • Backups at site
  • Tried contacting Tangie with a list of addresses to try and connect to, got an out of office reply
  • Moved visibility and ppm+pa over to the production server with a copy of the database tables, everything seems to be working
  • Working on the new Visibility site.  I have pages for every tool now with images and some content.  I fixed a javascript issue that was preventing some of the cooler menus and functionality from working (you get what you pay for from free templates).

Phil 5.3.12

8:00 – 9:30 ESSO

  • Added my presence to the search for solutions.

9:30 – 4:30 FP

  • Integrate pressures today
  • Run sound from the PC until the Arduino is working? Synth shield (http://shop.moderndevice.com/products/fluxamasynth)
  • The sim is now sending sound ID and volume to the Arduino, and getting pressures!
  • Measuring presures from the force sensors.
  • The board seems to get stuck in the WAITING state occasionally. Added a RESET if there is no character read for 1/2 second.

Tom 5.3.2012

Start: 10:40

  • Read up on decoupling capacitors and found that I am using them correctly but maybe the traces are too long.
  • After careful consideration of how to solve the problems with the boards, I decided to send the negative signal wire from the amp input to ground instead of the negative lead on the pre-amp.
  • This has solved the problem with the feedback loop and made it so only one speaker plays at a time.  Whatever was wrong before must have something to do with the negative traces.  I am not sure if the sound gets as loud as it did before but there seems to be less distortion.
  • Did a bunch of testing with different sounds and stuff to make sure everything was working properly
  • Added board design changes to changes checklist.
  • I haven’t built the connector for Phil to test the analog input yet but if he wants he can use the ones on the boards that are working while I build that tomorrow.  I probably should help with this to make sure the right wires are used.

End: 6:40

Mike 5.2.2012

  • Usual backups at site
  • Turned in our April status report to Jim and his assistant from TASC
  • Working with Tangie to diagnose connectivity issues at some sites.  Phil assistant has been requested by ‘management’
  • Training for the new cognos system has fallen through so the customer would like to move forward with that.  There may be a meeting next week
  • Dong’s VR came through
  • Looked up the standards for classification banners on websites
  • Back at the mill typing up our April status for FGM Jim
  • Updated my 2012 performance plan
  • Working on content for the VIS Tool index pages

Phil 5.2.12

8:00 – 4:30 FP

  • And somehow, here we are back at communication libraries. At least I have an existence proof that it *can* work. The serial console is perfectly happy. Which means the Arduino code is happy. It looks like I get to blame Windows.
  • Serial looks more solid today. Need to integrate the classes so that ArduinoSerial does a straight passthrough to SerialPort
  • Code is fixed and in Subversion. Back to Monday’s task of integrating with the sim.
  • Building the outgoing JSON object. It turns out that trying to set an int value using cJSON->valueint doesn’t work. Use cJSON->valuedouble. If it’s an int, the printing will be correct.
    • SoundObject is up and running
    • PressureObject is created and waiting to be populated.
    • Tom is building a connector so that I can interact with the pressure sensors tomorrow.

Phil 5.1.12

8:00 – 5:00 FP

  • Generalize JSON parsing in the sketch
  • Integrate serial communication into the demo. Fail gracefully into a GUI-only system
    • Add sound?
    • Adding DataObjects for sound type & volume (inputs) and pressure (outputs). Done
    • And now the serial code is choking again. It seems to be related to the size of the stream that’s sent up. Looking at that after lunch. First test will be to read on the pc without writing, while having the arduino write at faster and faster rates.
    • I got things to work better, but not as well as the serial console. Found a serial library on google code (http://code.google.com/p/mbsutil/). Going to try to use a few pieces from that ad see if it will work better. Got it to compile. Tomorrow, I’ll try to integrate it…

Phil 4.30.12

8:00 – 4:30 FP

  • Seminar. Last one for the year!
  • SF86 follow up
  • Updated resume
  • Talked to Tom a bit about his preamp problems, and worked out a way to proceed.
  • Looked at the Arduino, but did nothing with it. Back to a normal schedule tomorrow.

Tom DeVito 4.30.2012

Start: 11:30

Board Design Improvements:

  • Add a switch for turning the board on/off
  • Move input leads so that the mounting hole doesn’t intersect with one of them.  I don’t think this is the cause of the issue as the one that works well has this same issue.

Potential solutions to the feedback issue:

  • Send the input signals negative lead to group instead of to the negative on the pre-amp
  • Possible need for another voltage regulator on 12 volt side.
  • Need to rebuild board on a breadboard to experiment with possible solutions.
  • Check current on 5 volt branch to make sure its not going over 1 amp.
  • Isolate out pre-amp to see if the problem is with that circuitry.

End : 3:15

Phil 4.28.12

1:00pm – 5:00 FP

  • Brought in some more tools
  • Seeing whether Tom and I can integrate the hardware for the show. Nope – feedback issues in the audio
  • The burn test ran fine for approximately 20 hours at 19.2 kbaud. I’m going to work on creating a separate library and then integrate into the KF hand code.
  • built separate library. Realized that I need to put in the JSON reading code on the PC side. Done.
  • Added string assembly code to arduino JSON library and tested
  • Committed all to Subversion

Mike 4.27.2012

  • Usual back ups at site
  • Production server still was not working when I got in.  Sent out and email checking on the status.  Right before I left I checked the site again and it worked!  No word from anyone but I sent an email out thanking everyone who I contacted and letting them know it was now working.
  • Now that the production server is up and running I’m working on new index and information pages for the visibility suite.  One page will have a banner declaring it the test site and urging people to the production site.

Phil 4.27.12

8:00 – 6:00 FP

  • Put all my arduino communication work in SVN in my sandbox folder. Pulled down a copy to the laptop to check later
  • PAD lab meeting at 10:00
  • It looks like you really have to be careful with the memory on the UNO. The aJson print() function seems to be sloppy about the strings it creates, even if you re-use the object. I created a function that stitches together the force values inside a JSON compatable string and sends it straight over the wire. That’s been working fine for about an hour now (it’s 5:45). I think I’ll let it burn for the weekend.

Tom 4.26.2012

Start: 10:00

  • Went to get some more wire and smaller bolts
  • Made a bus for to I2c
  • Populated another board
  • 3rd board is mostly populated minus the amp and midi shield
  • The third board only has half the electronics as it only controls one finger instead of two
  • Had some trouble soldering the midi controllers because there was solder stuck in the hole.  The connections don’t look pretty but it trying to get them perfect was breaking the boards.  The midi and reset pins have jumper pads which made them a bit easier to deal with.
  • There are still a few things to do.  I need a ground bus for the shared ground, wires for the midi to arduino, wires for sensors to the arduino, and the amp and mid controller on the third board need to be attached.  I crimped most of the other wires but have not put them in the harness yet, some may need to be redone.  I plan on being in at 7:00 or 7:30 tomorrow to finish this stuff.  It is realistic to expect me to be done with this part by either 10 or 11.

End:  10:00

Mike 4.25.12 + 4.26.12

4.25

  • Usual backups in the morning
  • I came in to find my help ticket for getting connectivity to our production server closed as ‘resolved.’  The server was still unreachable.  Luckily a very nice lady from the customer advocate office asked to confirm the the issue was in fact resolved.  She helped me get the ticket reopened.
  • A guy who saw the email chain from earlier this week and last is trying to help me diagnose the firewall issue.  He asked me to run a continuous ping to the production server so I wrote a batch file that pings and queries port 443 on the production server ever 5 seconds until stopped.  Unfortunately he’s not responding today.
  • While waiting I decided to verify that the CASPORT servlet filter I wrote will work on the production server.  I was mostly worried that connectivity to CASPORT would be a problem.  The library and  test servlet deployed without a problem.  This is probably the most valuable library I’ve ever written: “CASPORT enable your webapp in 5 minutes.”
  • Continuing the spring-security tutorials

4.26

  • Backups
  • The firewall guy is back and responding to my emails.  Started the ping for him and he said he would investigate.  No word back after several hours of waiting and email stating I was about to stop the ping.
  • Back at the mill learning about spring-security.