Project Description Update

The first half of February was dedicated to preparing for our presentation. In preparation for the MGTR we have broken into groups, and are working on separate tasks to complete and eventually come back together. All groups had something that needed to be ordered, assembled, and finalized. So we are able to get the most efficient feedback that will help our final invention in the long run.
Our project description remains the same.  Our project description is:

Our device will mitigate the number of hot car deaths of children and pets. We will investigate and test a variety of technologies to integrate into a simple, reliable device with a three tiered alert system. First, a text alarm will be sent, next, a voice alarm for individuals in the vicinity will be activated, and finally a GPS location of the vehicle will be sent to authorities notifying them of the emergency.

Technical Progress During Last Month

Each individual team had a responsibility to get as far as we could with the provided time up to the MGTR. At the event, we presented to our peers and beneficiaries everything that we completed. We received a bunch of informational and productive feedback.

This month was the Mid-Grant Technical Review, so the Infrared Team was working on how to  integrate with the the sensor with the weight ignition to showcase that some of our sensors work together. First, we connected all three to the same arduino. Then, we combined the different codes.  These three different components are now intergrated. The Speaker team was able to get our vocal alarm to play using the arduino wave shield. The Capnography Team is fairly new. They were able to accomplish was calculating the minimum output of the CO2 density that we needed. Before the MGTR we were able to get the GPS functioning and send the location of the device to the computer.  The SMS Team was working on getting the SMS text message to be sent to our phone, and was successful in making this happen prior to the MGTR. 
At the MGTR,  after we presented we set up tables with our different technologies, broken down piece by piece so the viewers will be able to see everything that we put into our system. Based off what the viewers see, they will be able to notice our errors and/or correct/adjust to make the most efficient product.

Goals for Upcoming Month

Our goals that we have set for the month of March, include our sensor teams going forward with our testing and combining what we have completed so far. We are planning to have a three tiered alarm system for our invention, in order for the system to be complete we need to include the following feedback that we received from our audience at the MGTR:

Our GPS (Global Positioning System) Team has to get the GPS sensor able to work while in movement or connected to some kind of wireless connection when wifi or data is not present. We will finish the GPS sensor so that it will able to send a location to multiple areas without wifi or data available. The only worry we have now is if the GPS won’t be able to send an accurate location when needed.

The Speaker Team will consider the volume of the alarm and how we can integrate it in the car. We have been researching ways to integrate our vocal alarm. The major potential problem is the complexity involved in interfacing with vehicle ECUs. 

The Capnography team will test the CO2 sensor technology, because it may prove to be useful in the end. In order to get the task done we searched for CO2 sensors that were compatible with arduino, and ordered the specific CO2 sensor that we needed so we can test the sensor to see if appropriate for our device. Errors that we may run into include the CO2 sensor might not work efficiently and detect the baby’s output of CO2 since there is already carbon dioxide present in the car.

Feedback on SMS Messaging was to consider making a contact list so that the message can be sent to more than one person. Ways to complete this are to check with the online programs to see if several people can be contacted at once. A problem we may face is if the owner’s phone is off/dead, how will they be contacted?

Last but not least our Infrared Team needed 

to do more reliability testing with the Sensor. Our school has a partnership with GA Tech CEISMIC. So, we reached out and emailed two of them to come work with us after school to design a reliability testing plan we need to find different vehicles to test, so it may be difficult to test in each of the vehicles.

One additional major task that we will be getting into this month is how we will present our design at MIT.  We need to make our design interactive, and it is tiny and made of electronic components.  We are beginning to research and brainstorm this now.