Brandon Smith
I worked mainly on creating the host module.  I also worked together with Nick on integrating the host and player systems and on adapting the HCI software for the Bluetooth chip to function with the PIC32 architecture.

Working on this project has taught me not to rush into building a system, but to take my time to learn how the pieces will interact with each other.  Many of the issues we had over the course of this project came from the fact that we did not fully research or develop how the system would work before we ordered the parts.  I would say that this was our largest problem.  We didn’t solve it so much as we found a work-around.  After buying two sets of Bluetooth chips and still not being able to make the system fully work with either one, we resorted to simplifying our system.  If we had done the research first, we probably could have avoided not only the last-minute simplification, but buying the second set of chips as well.  In future, I will try to finish all of the research before beginning the work.  That way I will be less likely to be caught unprepared by something that I could have accounted for.

Nick Falco

I worked mainly on the player module but also worked together with Brandon on interfacing with the HCI architecture.The most important thing that I have to take away from this is you should really fully research everything before attempting to implement it.  The originally ordered Bluefruit chips ended up not being what we needed and that ended up being near catastrophic.  As a result of this however I did learn a lot about Bluetooth communication and the HCI architecture.

I’d say the biggest problem we faced was in the initial incorrect selection of chips.  The originally ordered Bluefruit chips were not capable of acting as a Host and when we found a host chip and had the plugged in we found that the host chip would not work with the Bluefruit chips so we had to buy more peripheral chips.  Also due to budget restrictions, we were hesitant to purchase more chips.  In lieu of purchasing the chips straight away we spend significant time trying to make our existing chips work, but ultimately failed. All the fuss with the chips set our plans significantly backwards preventing the kind of polish on the project that I had hoped for.  In the future further research will definitely be conducted first.