…and we were an interdisciplinary engineering design team composed of mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering majors. What a journey IPPD has been for our team. Through the highs of getting our initial prototype to work and the lows of frying our sensors, the Gear Guardians persisted, and we were able to show our work off at the final design review (FDR) event on April 22nd. We were honored to give the keynote presentation at FDR as the 2025 IPPD exemplary team. We would like to thank our coach, Dr. Erin Patrick, and our industry liaisons, Mary Alice Beck and Jessica McDaniel, for all the work they have done for the team.

So, what’s next for the team? Victoria, Lyndsey, Joseph, Connor, and Michael will all be graduating soon while Isaac and Lucas have one more semester left. Lyndsey is starting her full-time role in Minnesota, Joseph is starting his full-time role in Wisconsin, and Victoria and Connor are both starting full-time roles in Florida. Michael will be attending Purdue University this fall to pursue a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering. This summer, Lucas will be interning in Kansas City while Isaac will be interning in Atlanta. Our careers are taking the team all over the country, and we are excited to pursue engineering opportunities while applying the skills we gained through IPPD. Go Gear Guardians!

This week the Gear Guardians presented their final design review presentation draft to a peer audience with teams Saline Sync and Electric Eye. They provided valuable feedback on the team’s testing plan diagrams and system overview slides. We are working hard to perfect our presentation so we can present our innovative asset management solution!

The team finished testing this week and were able to integrate a second doorway into our system. We are actively working to finish integrating this doorway so that we are able to demonstrate full scalability within the 80% accuracy threshold. All software tasks have been satisfied, and we are days away from completing our system documentation. Next week we’ll showcase our project video and poster. Go Gear Guardians!

This week the team presented their project to the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce at the local Cade Museum’s Annex. Surrounded by vintage cars and “the world’s largest calliope”, the team gave an overview of the project problem, solution, and next steps to local business owners. It is through these business owners and company sponsors that make the IPPD program possible – we would like to thank them for supporting Florida’s up-and-coming engineers. It was refreshing to hear the fresh perspectives of local business leaders. The team was given valuable points to consider as we prepare for our final design review presentation in less than two weeks.

Unfortunately, the team ran into an issue with the RFID reader. Despite it visibly containing two antenna ports, it can only read one RFID antenna at a time. The team swiftly ordered a new one which will be implemented next week. Even though end-to-end testing has been postponed, the team was able to make progress in other project areas including conducting after scenario questionnaire (ASQ) and system usability score (SUS) user studies on the user interface. Through this, we received valuable feedback on our UI design which will be addressed as we finish out the project. It was suggested that we conduct the survey on a non-technical audience as well. We are approaching our last full week. Go Gear Guardians!

This week the Gear Guardians presented their system at prototype inspection day (PID) 2. We showcased a greatly improved system since last semester – all hardware is integrated and functionality was able to be demonstrated with one doorway system one tag at a time. Our feature demonstration consisted of three main elements: the UI automatically updates what room a tagged object is in, a new tagged item can be onboarded, and a database conflict yields a pop-up error that must be resolved. We are excited to present our prototype next week at the Cade Museum!

Next week, we will focus on integrating the second doorway to our system to demonstrate system scalability. All logic has been working correctly when one tagged object at a time passes through a doorway. This logic will be adjusted to allow for multiple tagged objects to be accurately detected. We are now in the final three weeks until FDR. Go Gear Guardians!

The team had a breakthrough this week by mounting the fully integrated RFID system and ultrasonic sensors to the doorway. This system is successfully able to detect the movement direction, the room, and the identity of one tagged object! Additionally, a printed circuit board concept was created to simplify the organized mess of our system. The mechanical engineers can now re-design the RFID antenna housing to accommodate the printed circuit board. With our ultrasonic sensors now functioning as intended and with the proven success of our system at reading one RFID tag at a time, the team has an exciting prototype to demonstrate to the judges at Prototype Inspection Day 2 on April 1st.

Further tuning will be made to the RFID reader power and the ultrasonic sensor sensitivity to allow for multiple tags to be detected and logged in our database. A housing system will be made to improve the wire management on the RFID reader. After overcoming our roadblocks with the ultrasonic sensors, the team has garnered the momentum needed to deliver a fully functioning product by the final design review. Go Gear Guardians!

This week the team had a much-needed workday during the class period to lead us into spring break week! The hardware integration is going smoothly with the RFID reader, antenna, and the Pico all connected to the Raspberry Pi. The workday was focused on adjusting the code for the new ultrasonic sensors. The team spent hours walking through the doorway to test the sensors while Lyndsey adjusted the sensor code-at least we got our steps in! As with most hobby electronics, the sensors worked great…until they didn’t. When the team comes back from spring break, we will finalize the sensor code so we can create a PCB.

The system integration team created a second doorframe to demonstrate the scalability of our system to multiple rooms. The software integration team created pop-ups for unknown items and for database conflicts which can both be addressed on the user interface. We are in the home stretch with this project when we come back from break but until then we plan to be relaxing at home, on the beach, and in the woods. Go Gear Guardians!

This week saw a guest lecturer presenting on the “heART of Storytelling” which helped put the team in the mindset to create a promotional video for our product. While this product is primarily intended for laboratory facility applications, we have already received comments from coaches and students saying that they would love our system to be implemented in their own house! We intend to assess the system usability, aesthetics, and future applications via a third-party usability survey which was developed and approved by our faculty mentor and industry liaisons this week.

The team was able to interface the RFID reader to the Raspberry Pi via the Pico. With the implementation of the serial converter, the Pi is now receiving the tag data for tags detected by the antenna. Additionally, new sophisticated ultrasonic sensors arrived that should help the team address the sensor testing shortcomings from the previous week. A PCB will be created once these sensors are incorporated with the current code. The software has been updated to address customer requests with the map page foundation being implemented in our user interface. The construction of a second system has commenced this week and will be finished by next week for the team to begin integration testing. Go Gear Guardians!

This week, the Gear Guardians presented their project progress during their Quarterly Review Board (QRB) 2 presentation. Each sub team’s accomplishments and next steps were presented to defend the timely completion of our project. The QRB board pointed out that a $2,000 budget proved to be more than enough money for our team to construct one complete system. Therefore, the team made the decision this week to construct a second system-a decision that will be essential for us to prove the scalability of our system. Construction of a second false doorway will begin next week. The QRB panel was ultimately pleased with our progress and future plans!

With the serial communication configured using the serial converter, the team conducted RFID range testing to determine the appropriate power for the RFID system. This will be integrated with the ultrasonic sensors so that the sensors will only activate if a tag is detected. A few basic tests were performed with the sensors. Tests that measured movement directionality where a user walks under the doorway at a constant pace proved to be successful while tests that involved pausing underneath the doorway did not meet our expectations. Further work will be conducted next week to refine the ultrasonic sensor logic so that we can meet our target goals. A usability survey was also drafted this week to assess the efficacy of our system from a third-party perspective. We are excited to finish system integration soon and start testing. Go Gear Guardians!

This week saw our team’s first attempt at a full physical system integration. While we still have a way to go in getting all of the hardware communicating with each other, it was great for us to finally visualize what we had only seen in sketches up until this week. Each sub team is continuing to work hard on integrating their hardware with the microcontroller. The RFID team found that a serial converter would best serve to enable microcontroller/reader communication. The microcontroller team was able to improve the ultrasonic sensor logic to read directionality approximately 90% of the time. This will be essential when determining the direction people will be walking through a doorway. The software team integrated the frontend/database as well as enabled inputs from the microcontroller. Finally, the mechanical team assembled the full system to the false doorway to realize our design concepts.

With the serial converter received, the team will finally be able to fully integrate all hardware components together to create our second system iteration. We plan to have this completed by the week of March 3rd. Go Gear Guardians!

This week saw all of the sub teams begin to merge together as we work to integrate our product. Notably, the sensors team was able to control two ultrasonic sensors using a Raspberry Pi Pico to detect movement direction. The RFID sub team was also able to communicate to the Pico via a handmade cable connecting the GPIO port on the RFID reader to UART pins on the Pico. All eyes are on the software sub team who will implement logic on the Pico to finish microcontroller integration. They were successful in creating the frontend layout, inventory page functionality, and notifications/history database tables. They also worked with the mechanical sub team to implement a cooling fan into the touchscreen housing design.

We will continue working hard to prepare each sub team for complete system integration. The sub teams are beginning to merge, and we are ever so much closer to creating a minimum viable product. Happy Valentine’s Day and Go Gear Guardians!