Week 2 Progress: April 10, 2013 - April 16, 2013: Arduino Background/ Setting up Arduino.

The Arduino is an "open-source electronics prototyping platform." It is basically a simple microcontroller with digital and analog inputs and outputs. It can be powered and interfaced with via USB. It can also run on its own external AC power source. It is coded for using the Arduino IDE. For this project MATLAB was used to code. The accelerometer used for this project uses 3 of the analog input pins to relay x, y, and z values.

There were a few steps that the team had to go through in order to configure the Arduino to work with MATLAB.

1. Download Arduino IDE from http://arduino.cc/en/main/software and install.
- Mac installation was quite simple while PC installation on Windows 8 required some troubleshooting
2. Connect Arduino and test which COM port it is plugged into.
3. Run a quick test program to ensure Arduino is functioning correctly.
4. Go to http://www.mathworks.com/academia/arduino-software/arduino-matlab.html and download the MATLAB Arduino support package.
5. Follow the instructions in the readme file to install. They are summarized in the following steps.
6. Upload the adiosrv.pde file to the Arduino.
7. Open the Arduino.m file in MATLAB to install Arduino libraries in MATLAB
8. Connect to Arduino using
    a=arduino('COMPORT')
    where COMPORT is the comport that was determined in step 2.

Week 2 Progress: April 10, 2013 - April 16, 2013

This week, the group members familiarized themselves with the Arduino device and its software. Alekhya and Jasmine downloaded the Arduino software from the website: http://www.arduino.cc/. They also looked into the process of programming and connecting the Arduino through Matlab. Ravi, Jay and Chad worked on creating physics equations to model the acceleration a person would experience if they fell versus someone dropping the device.

Week 1 Progress: April 3, 2013 - April 9, 2013

This week, the group worked primarily on brainstorming an idea for a bio-sensing device. We eventually settled on the issue of Life Alert. The rest of the week was spent developing the design. On Wednesday, the group wrote an abstract for the device that outlined the motivation and overall goals of the project. The main motivation for redesigning a life alert system was that the current ones require a user command to activate; however, if the user is injured and unable to activate the device, no help will arrive. The rest of the week was spent writing a design proposal. The proposal contains the deliverables, technical activities, project timeline, facilities and resources, expertise and budget. Below is also a proposed timeline for the project.

	Week
Task	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Literature study/ Research/ Mathematical Modelling	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
Mechanical design/ Electrical design		x	x
Programming			x	x	x	x	x
System integration/ Construction					x	x
Testing							x	x	x
Final report preparation								x	x	x