Weekly Accomplishments:
This week was tackling the major issue of communicating between the RFID scanner and the Unity game. Thankfully, a solution has finally been found. It feels a bit over-complicated, but it works under manual testing and should hold up all the way:
- Power up Pi and RFID Read/Writer
- Power up computer on the same network, ssh to pi
- Scan pendant against RFID reader, output to file
- Rsync file to the computer via ssh (hopefully this will be automated in the near future)
- Run the dummy unity program which looks at that location and updates gamesparks accordingly
- Pull results from gamesparks in-game
The setup for this took a while, but it ends up being fairly simple in the pi and application. The video below shows the file transfer occurring.
Also done this week, more component acquisition. We have the paint and clay needed to finish up the goat, and two additional pis and scanners have been ordered, along with 10 extra tags. I will need 2 additional microSD cards, but they have not been ordered.
As for plush progress, I have a good idea of what the third animal will be and have some fabric set aside. The anteater plush now has eyes as well.
For the game side, login/registration was fixed, and the app was finally hooked up to read in acquired animals from the server. Users can tap to swap which anima they use in-game.
Images:
Video this week, showing off the new RSync between our pi and my laptop
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uwSZU0IbvlXcYmhjvJBxuMjCMQBm7wx7
Additional Material List:
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- Battery/USB Charger (still torn on which I’ll be using, but right now it isn’t a priority)
- MicroSD Card (this might add a bit to the expense of the plush
- Cost of Plastic for 3D printing the pendants (depends on whether I’m crushing the old pendant ot make the new one, or working around the original key fob. Again, I’ll make this call once I have a base product working).
Areas of Concern:
Right now, biggest concern is with soldering the RFID Reader/Writer and making sure it works consistently. Right now, every component works individually, but linking them up is always cause for concern. Here’s what it looks like now:
RFID to File: Tested, but torn apart for transport. Code is good, hardware needs to be redone
File to Computer: Tested as of 4/14
Dummy Unity to Game: Tested as of 4/7
Essentially, we have 3 groupings of technologies that need to be tied together. This means we need, respectively:
- The RFID reader/writer to work consistently after soldering
- A scheduled task to run RSync
- The dummy file to be updated to grab the file from the new location
3 is a quick fix, but requires me to take a few notes before implementing. 2 can be skipped until everything else is done because the test can be run manually. 1 is what concerns me most, since my soldering skills are pretty stale. We’ll see how it goes.