With just one week remaining, we managed to have a successful week tying everything together. Like Owen said last week, we ran into issues with the RFID. We had finally gotten it to work on our makeshift electrical tape track with a few sensors along the way, and decided to move it along to a practical application. However, that’s when we realized that our tags being 3mm, the antenna was too small for the signal to overcome the metal floor tiles. This week we received our color sensor as an alternative. We decided that since we can’t use any form of wave communication, our best bet was to either change back to QR (which we really didn’t want to have to do) or find an alternative. This color sensor has worked wonders thus far. We are able to pick up readings via lux, or lumens, and convert that into a 6 digit RGB hex code. With this we can set it up exactly like our RFID tags. We will be mapping out the data center similar to how we had tags, which is to have a temperature reading taken at the front of a server cabinet. Not only will this allow more precise temperature data, but it will also be a sort of location finder for the roomba. 

With one week remaining, there is still a decent amount to be done, but we feel confident that once we leave, there will be a stable platform for the rest of our peers here to work with and improve upon when necessary. With our downtime on Monday before the color sensor came, we were able to get our preliminary temperature and humidity data uploaded using phant. The link for  that, which will be updated real-time once this is permanently running, is here. Next week our main goal is to, well, finish the project. We need to implement our new color tags, fine tune any bugs, and get our data uploading to local servers here for ease of access.

Stay tuned for our final blog post next Friday!