Goals for the week-

• Get a working motor that appropriately responds to changes in light on the photo-resistor.
• Finish the battery status indicator with LEDs.
• Integrate code for both of our subsystems.

Tasks completed-

• Peter: Setup motor to respond to light.
• Nakul: Setup battery status indicator with LEDs.

Challenges-

• Once again we faced a situation where the device was not recognized by the PC and we were unable to program and test the board after a certain point.
• Due to this we were unable to integrate code for the different parts.

Plan for next week-

• Both: Integrate code
• Peter: Test the rotation and setup mechanical side to hold up the solar panel.
• Nakul: Setup low power mode for specific times on RTCC and for low battery level.

Goals for the week-

• Finalize design ideas and develop a high level design plan for the different system components.
• Finalize hardware parts to buy and submit Project Proposal.

Tasks completed-

• Peter: Researched hardware components for Proposal and started conceptual design for motor control and PowerBoost usage.
• Nakul: Researched existing solutions, developed high-level design plan and started software design for charging status display.

Challenges-

• Choosing how to deal with low sunlight situations. We settled on one of our researched solution to use real-time tracking with regular updates to motor position.
• Deciding between a stepper and servo motor. It was a difficult decision and we opted for a servo due to the simpler control mechanism.

Plan for next week-

• Peter: Test solar panel rotation using the servo motor. Implement the PID control loop.
• Nakul: Monitor battery levels in software and output status on LCD or using 4 LEDs. Look into how the sleep mode for PIC32 works.