Week 3

In the third week of our project, our group had two meetings and attended two lab sessions. During the lab sessions, we finished soldering wires to connect the LED strips' data lines in series. We also successfully soldered the 5V and ground connections of the LEDs in parallel. We then drilled a hole in the center of our board for the Pi camera and tested its visibility in the PC lab. We also secured the extra lengths of wire to the back of the board so we had neater cable management.

In these sessions we encountered a couple of challenges. We were unable to install OpenCV for image processing and every attempt at installation took hours. We also faced an issue with the power supply we ordered as it was too exposed. Modifying the supply to cover the exposure was not possible as we could not do it ourselves and it would take too long to do, given our current time frame.

In our meeting with our project supervisor, we explored the idea of changing the Neopixel mirror into a multipurpose platform that displays images and still pictures if OpenCV is still not able to be installed. In our second meeting of the week, without our supervisor, we managed to solve this issue of not being able to use our power supply. Instead of one 30A power supply connected to all 576 LEDs, we would use three 10A power supplies to power 168 LEDs each. For the remaining 72 LEDs, we considered powering them using the Raspberry Pi, however, we were unsure of how to connect the Pi in parallel with the LEDs. In the end we decided to power the remaining LEDs with a 3A supply to avoid frying the Pi.

Next week's plans are:

1) Unsolder some of the LEDs and connect them correctly for the use of 4 separate power supplies
2) 3D-print a case for the Raspberry Pi
3) Finish coding the Pi
4) Test the functionality of the display
5) Make the poster

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