This week marked an exciting milestone for our team. We had the opportunity to present our project in front of the entire Integrated Product and Process Design Program after being selected to participate in a poster conference in Texas this summer. Standing in front of such a large and diverse audience pushed us to clearly communicate not just what we built, but why it matters. It was a rewarding experience to see our work resonate with others, and the questions we received challenged us to think more critically about our design decisions and future improvements.

In addition to this presentation, we also had the chance to share our project with the public and with our liaison, Dr. Aaron Costin. These sessions offered a different perspective, as we explained our system to audiences with varying levels of technical background. Being able to adapt our explanations helped us better understand our own project and highlighted areas where we can improve clarity and usability. The feedback we received was both encouraging and constructive, giving us concrete ideas to refine our system moving forward.

Overall, this week was a strong reminder of how far we have come as a team. From early concepts to a fully developed project ready for external presentation, the progress has been significant. We are excited to build on this momentum, continue refining our work, and represent our project at the conference in June with even greater confidence.

The picture below displays one of our team members, Justin, exhausted from our succssful presentation and networking.

This week was all about wrapping up major deliverables and preparing for our final showcase. Team Brick by Bit focused on completing the Final Design Review presentation, squashing software bugs, and setting up documentation to help future users understand our system.

We successfully presented our PR FDR, which was a good opportunity to reflect on everything we’ve built this year and demonstrate how our system meets the original scope of work objectives. On the technical side, we fixed several analytics bugs that were affecting data display accuracy on the dashboard. We also started creating onboarding documentation to make it easier for new users or future teams to understand how our system works, from hardware setup to software configuration.

As we head into next week, our main focus is preparing to showcase our final design. We’re making sure all the pieces are polished and working smoothly so we can give a strong demonstration of what we’ve accomplished. The end of the semester is approaching fast, but we’re in good shape to finish strong and deliver a complete, functional system for construction environments.

This week the team made solid progress on refining our system and adding new monitoring capabilities as we approach the final stretch of the project. We’ve been focused on improving the dashboard experience and expanding our sensor capabilities with air quality monitoring.

On the software side, we implemented real node data into the analytics tab, giving users better insights into system performance and trends over time. The dashboard now displays node battery levels, which is crucial for understanding when field-deployed sensors need servicing. We also tested our new air quality sensor and manually calibrated sensors on the nodes to ensure accurate readings in real-world conditions.

Looking ahead to next week, our priorities include wrapping up the Final Design Review paper, completing LoRaWAN range tests to validate our system’s coverage capabilities, and finalizing the dashboard display for a polished user experience. We’re also working on implementing the production setup on the cloud to prepare for potential scaling beyond our initial deployment.

This week was a big step forward for Team Brick by Bit as we presented our progress at PID and got the chance to engage directly with industry professionals. Overall, the experience was incredibly valuable. We received thoughtful feedback on both our prototype design and how we should refine our messaging heading into FDR. While we hit a few minor hiccups during the full system walkthrough with the monitor, but we were able to recover quickly and demonstrate a fully functional system. Each team member clearly communicated their contributions, and putting everything together in a live setting helped us identify exactly where we stand.

One of the most impactful moments came from speaking with a professional experienced in construction environments. We had been concerned about whether adding another dashboard might overwhelm users, but that conversation helped reframe our thinking—it’s not a major issue at this stage, which lets us stay focused on building functionality rather than over-optimizing too early. On the technical side, we continued making progress across both software and hardware. Software saw incremental improvements and feature additions, while the hardware team aligned on ordering enough components to support three full prototypes so multiple users can test simultaneously. The next key area of focus for hardware will be getting the air quality sensing fully operational on the BME680, starting with research and validation before integrating it into the broader system. For software they will be working on gateway security and bring up process, as well as the diagnostics platform for viewing data.

This week back from break marked a major milestone for our team—we completed our first real-world deployment with a pilot company, and it went better than we could have hoped. After months of designing, building, and testing, seeing the system running live in an actual environment was incredibly rewarding. The deployment included our gateway setup alongside multiple sensor nodes, each actively collecting and transmitting data. In the image, you can see the gateway and one of the nodes installed indoors, while another node was mounted outside on a wall to capture environmental data in a different setting. Everything came online smoothly, communication remained stable, and the system performed exactly as intended during initial testing.

On top of that, we’re excited to share that our project has been nominated to attend the Texas A&M Capstone Conference. It’s a great opportunity to showcase the work we’ve been doing and connect with other teams and industry professionals. Overall, this week felt like a turning point—moving from development into real deployment and validation—and it’s only the beginning of what’s ahead.

This week was the last before spring break, and as a team we were able to finalize the end-to-end communication pipeline between the node and cloud dashboard. We also created multiple node enclosures for testing data from multiple nodes simultaneously. An encrypted MQTT bridge was also configured between the gateway and cloud for added security. The software team was also able to add password reset functionality for the website.

Overall, the team is ready to deploy the IoT system that we’ve been working hard on for several months so the team’s filled with anticipation! We will be deploying the system at a current construction project by Whiting-Turner at the UF Chemical Engineering building. We also made sure it took place before PID so we can verify that the prototype is in working condition. For now, though, the team is focused on rest and relaxation this next week before coming back strong for the remaining part of IPPD.

Here’s a picture of the finalized node design layout that we will be using for deployment: