Week 10-12

Since the Raspberry Pi was not working with Bluetooth, we consulted our friend Ani, who is a Raspberry Pi expert. The many week journey of hard work in which we tried to make the Pi Zero work culminated in this session. We came to the conclusion that the Raspberry Pi is not functional with Bluetooth, and we decided to switch to exclusively using an Arduino instead

We began to make some serious progress on the actual code for the app. It took some time to get the application (android studio) set up along with the emulator we are using to constantly test the app within an android phone. For now, we are using a Pixel 5. We spent time becoming accustomed to how the application works-- how/where different files are stored, how to code the xml files, and how to make images, how to implement images, and more.

Given that we are now using arduino, we are following a new tutorial that teaches how to develop an app that controls the arduino. Besides coding this, we implemented a professional looking logo and splash screen to appear as the app is opened.

In order for us to fit the device in the module, we had to lengthen the wires of the fan. To do that, we tied our wires together and used heat-shrink plastic to keep it insulated. After this we were able to put the hardware in the module and have it work as intended. All that is left for this module is to connect it using Bluetooth.

We have decided that the next and final module that we will make will be a water mister. To do that we have ordered the necessary parts, mainly a nano mister which is small enough to fit in our module. We are then planning to reverse engineer the mister and connect it to the Arduino.

We have also ordered a Bluetooth module for our Arduino. If all goes well, we should be able to connect the Arduino to the virtual phone on Android Studio and control the modules remotely from the virtual device.