Week #18 - May 23rd to May 29th - GUI Progress, CAD Rendering, finished battery.

To being, I ordered the final solution for the battery on the device and tested it. The 12V 2000 mAH battery functions. All the testing required to make sure this works has also been done. I put the RPi under max load and the battery could power the device for 2 hours. This will be suitable for the device. The image below shows the 12V battery running the RPi through the power switch board and the buck converter. There is also a 5V power bank connected as a back up battery. During these tests, the USB cellular adapter was connected the entire time to add additional power draw to the instrument as another way to verify that everything could be powered.

Set to arrive on June 3rd is a power switch that has capabilities to charge the back up battery while connected to onboard power. At that time, I plan on changing the power module board if it works quickly. I will not spend too much time on that since it is not part of our engineering req.

Finalized a good prototype with accurate measurement for a first draft / possible final draft of the case. The screen would attach to the case and mount from the back. The new design is two 'L' shaped plates that attach together. This allows us to easily remove the top plate and get easy access to the internals should be have to. In the images below, I've used two different colors to show each piece. The black base piece which holds all the components has a cut out for the screen, and two ports. The red lid has a few grills for airflow of the fan that will go inside. The final casing will all be in one color, likely black. Again, the different colors were only used here to show contrast.

Lastly, I spent a few hours working on a GUI for 3/6 buttons that were assigned to me. I am putting down the power situation as I feel confident that it is functional. I will be shifting my focus to the programming moving forward and the hardware will take a back seat for me as most of that is setup already. That means that I plan on spending more of my time these coming weeks to helping James on the software portion of things. Below is an image of the GUI for a screen I setup. James and I have decided to use QT designer moving forward.