Blog Posts

Integration Begins

Published:February 13th, 2023
Category:Spring Semester

This week, all necessary parts are in and the combination of these pieces has begun. The main pieces of concern are the cellular data and GPS combo module, RFID reader, microcontroller, and the server/database. Communication between these parts is currently the most important part of this project, so our time this week was spent getting the transfer of data working. As stated in previous posts/presentations, the flow of data is as follows:

  1. RFID reader receives a signal from an RFID tag (located on an asset)
  2. The asset’s serial number is sent to the microcontroller
  3. The microcontroller gets the GPS coordinates from the cellular/GPS module
  4. GPS coordinates and serial data is combined and sent to the server through cellular
  5. The database stores the received data

As of the writing of this post, the asset serial data can be received, some hard-coded data can be sent to the server via MQTT, and the data can be stored into a database. The GPS module has not been tested yet, as most of our work this week was done in areas where a GPS fix wasn’t possible, but the module should work outdoors. The main problem that will be ironed out during this coming week is taking asset data and sending it through the cellular data module. Currently, these cannot be done at the same time, so some additional testing/troubleshooting will need to be done to fix the problem.

Communication and data flow between modules

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Start of Testing

Published:February 6th, 2023
Category:Spring Semester

Welcome to this week’s investigator Blog post. This week we had our first quarterly review board presentation to showcase the accomplishments we have completed so far and what our next steps are in completing our project. Over the past weeks we have been ordering parts in order to complete our next prototype. This new prototype will have higher powered parts in order to increase its maximum reader range. This should allow us to read tags from around 30 feet away.  

The new higher powered RFID reader was delivered earlier this week are we began testing it with an antenna we already possessed. This antenna is larger and higher powered than the one we will be using in our final solution. With this antenna we were able to start gathering data points relating to the power output and read distance. Below is a picture of us testing the reader range of our new RFID reader with this antenna. To wrap up this week we ordered the two possible antennas that we will be using in our final solution. We ordered two to gather more information about the weight to reader distance correlation. This will allow us to further optimize our solution and produce the best prototype we can. 

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Finalizing RFID Reader Purchases

Published:January 27th, 2023
Category:Uncategorized

This week, our team worked on finalizing the exact RFID reader to purchase and placing the purchase request. The component we ended up getting was the M6E Micro with a carrier board, which we chose because the carrier board had connection points that would make interfacing with the board easier.

https://www.atlasrfidstore.com/thingmagic-micro-lte-carrier-board/

We have received most of the other parts we ordered last week and plan on getting together to start setting up and testing the system. On the software side, we are exploring setting up an online database, as well as using MQTT as a communication protocol for interfacing between the RFID reader system and the online database. We are excited to make progress on this project and build our spring prototype!

Making Purchases

Published:January 20th, 2023
Category:Spring Semester

Much of the Fall semester was spent on planning and deciding what components needed to be purchased and from where to properly deliver the final version of our prototype. With all that in mind, Team InvestiGator has officially got back in the groove of what the plan was and we made our first few purchases. There are essentially two major components of our project:

  • Ensure sensor can read tags and send data to microcontroller.
  • Ensure microcontroller can send data to a database through the internet.

The parts we just purchased promote our progress towards this second goal, and the team is planning on making the purchases that will allow us to work on the first goal as well. We don’t expect everything to work right off the bat, but we are excited to get our hands dirty with the project we have been planning for so long!

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First Week of Spring Semester

Published:January 16th, 2023
Category:Spring Semester

It’s been a while since our last post! Since then we attended SLDR day where we presented our progress to our sponsor. While there we also had a chance to meet the sponsors of other teams and get their perspective on where our project was heading. We had good food, listened to a wonderful guest speaker from the college of business, and received valuable feedback on our project. Overall it was a great experience!

Now that we are back from a long winter break, it’s time to obtain the parts to begin building our final prototype. This week we continued reviewing potential parts and reached out to suppliers to hear their recommendations for our use case. We plan on having the system operational by mid-March so that we can test it in time for the final design review at the end of April.

Mitchell, Brady, Edward, Alex, and Jimmy at SLDR day last semester.

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Preparing for SLDR

Published:December 5th, 2022
Category:Fall Semester

Now that we’re back from our short and sweet Thanksgiving break, it’s time to finish the semester strong. The System Level Design Review (SLDR) event is on December 6th, where we will be presenting what we learned through from our initial prototype and what we plan to accomplish over the spring semester.

Initial Prototype from PID

To develop our report and presentation, we evaluated our fall prototype that we presented during Prototype Inspection Day by looking through feedback from our judges, coach, and liaisons. Our main improvements for the spring semester will be increasing the RFID reader range to around 30 feet, transporting data with a cellular connection instead of Wi-Fi, and developing a display and notification system for updated asset data.

We also ran through some test runs of our presentation, polishing up our speech and making sure our slides got our message across while not being overly technical. Overall, the team is well prepared for the presentation and is ready to end this semester strong. We’re looking forward to meeting the other sponsors and learning more about our fellow classmates during the SLDR event on Tuesday.

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Prototype Inspection Day

Published:November 22nd, 2022
Category:Fall Semester

On Tuesday of this week, we had our prototype inspection day. Our team’s weekly meeting was used to finalize the prototype and decide on roles for the presentation. The goal of our prototype was to test the flow of information in our system. Our prototype consists of an RFID reader, RFID tags, a microcontroller (ESP8266), a GPS module, and a router. Our prototype process starts with the RFID reader. Once the reader detects an RFID tag our microcontroller pulls the current latitude and longitude from the GPS module. We can then connect to a local Wi-Fi network due to our microcontroller, the ESP8266, having a built-in Wi-Fi module. We then send the data through the local network using a router. This data includes the RFID tag serial number and the GPS location. This gets sent to a server and pulled into our database along with a date and time stamp. 

We also received some useful feedback from the judges. Our judges made a few suggestions on how we could improve our project. They suggested adding a system to send an alert if the asset we are looking for is not in its proper location. We are going to take their feedback and incorporate it into our solution. 

Along with the prototype inspection we had our weekly meeting with our liaison and coach. We showed our project progress in our meetings and discussed what the next steps of our project will be. 

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Prototype Nearing Completion

Published:November 8th, 2022
Category:Fall Semester
Jimmy, Alex, and Brady Developing Prototype

With the prototype nearing completion, things are looking optimistic for Team Investigator. The GPS is able to obtain latitude and longitude information, the RFID reader is able to read tags and obtain the serial numbers, and we ended up using only the ESP8266 as a microprocessor and WIFI module. The board is able to connect to a router we have set up, and it is also able to send data out for other computers on this router to listen to via a TCP/IP connection. Moreover, a computer listening to the TCP port is able to add the data to an SQL database.

Overall, Team Investigator has been able to integrate all these sensors together with the exception of the GPS. All of our testing has been indoors (particularly due to the fact that we need too be near the router), however, we plan on ensuring the GPS information can also be transmitted alongside the RFID data when a tag is scanned before the prototype inspection day!

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Initial Prototype Development

Published:November 6th, 2022
Category:Fall Semester
Example SQL table used for testing MySQL database querying and client connections

This week we have been working on our initial prototype. Our major goal with this version of the prototype is to get the flow of information down from the sensors to the database. We have been able to get a basic database server up and running which we can query and save entries to. In addition, we have been able to get data from the RFID tags. We are now working on client connections to the server which will be able to access and modify data entries through a WLAN. This way we will be able to send data collected from tags to the database wirelessly.

At our last meeting, our coach Dr. Bobda provided us with a GSM device to connect via internet rather than the Wi-Fi module we were planning on using for the initial prototype. This would make more sense to use for the prototype since the drone will not be using a Wi-Fi connection but rather a cellular connection in the field.

The GPS and Wi-Fi modules that we ordered have arrived and we will be working on testing them and integrating them into the other components of the system for this upcoming week. We will also look into using the GSM device as a means of connecting to the server for the initial prototype.

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Building the Prototype

Published:October 29th, 2022
Category:Fall Semester

Last week, we had a great time presenting our Preliminary Design Review to Florida Power and Light sponsors and subject matter experts, and we were able to get our preliminary design report finalized and signed off. We are working now on ordering the parts and building our initial prototype that we plan to present at prototype inspection day.

Among our members, we already have an Arduino Uno and a low-cost RFID reader we plan to use to for prototype purposes. We have also purchased a GPS module and Wi-Fi module to connect with the Arduino microcontroller. We plan to reuse these components for the final deliverable and switch out the RC522 RFID reader with a reader with a much greater range.

The RFID RC522 chip we plan on using for the prototype.

This upcoming week, we will be working on setting up our database endpoint to accept data via Wi-Fi. Once we receive the additional parts we ordered, we will work on wiring together the entire solution.

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