Chintan Vaishnav

Project: 
Objective: To produce field-deployable low cost agricultural sensors integrated with DYI tutorial.
Stretch Objective: Integrate sensor readings with an android phone. 
Constraint: Must be manufacturable using a milling machine and basic molding and casting.   

What questions need to be resolved?

1. Measurement

   1. How to calibrate load and txrx capacitive sensors (samples to moisture content)?

   2. How does the casing affect capacitance?

   3. What is the best way to deploy probes? Should they be permanently deployed or deployed on-demand?

   4. What is the best way to get electronics as close to probe as possible?

2. Power

   1. What is the most efficient way to manage power?

3. Processing and Storage

   1. How much history of readings, if any, should stored be on the card?

   2. Where should be the routine for converting digital signal to moisture values reside?

   3. How much history is relevant to keep?

4. Displaying

   1. What is the most intuitive way to display results?

5. Tutorial

   1. What is the best language-agnostic tutorial that can be created?

6. Agriculture

   1. How does moisture relate to crop yield? Can we derive intuition about what information to display from there?

What tasks need to be completed?

1. Board redesign to incorporate basic debugging using LEDs

2. Calibration

3. User Interface (Android?)

4. Testing

5. Creating a tutorial

What has worked? What hasn't?

1. Sensors are working. User interface is under control on Mac (but the Mac is with Police :). Have not worked on android yet. 

2. Getting started on calibration and testing. Know how to turn readings into capacitance. Don't yet know how to turn capacitance into moisture. 

3. Have to make casing. Don't yet know about ideal casing. 

4. Have to produce tutorial

  What will happen when?

1. Wednesday - Board Redesign

2. Thursday, Friday - Calibration and Testing

3. Saturday – GUI

4. Monday – Tutorial

Demand- vs supply-side time management
Designing with parts in the lab
Time triage
?

Spiral development

1. Experiment with the most basic sensors (Neil's), acrylic casing, simple calculations, and text based Uis

2. Improve sensors, 

3. Improve casing

4. Improve UI

5. Write a tutorial

Documentation during development

1. Document iterations of board design

2. Comment the code

3. Document calibration procedure and references

4. Sanity test cases and results

5. Enable UI with use instructions