I really enjoyed the time I spent at BlueStamp and it was a great introduction into engineering. I learned a lot working on this project and I’m glad I joined this program. Through this program I gained more confidence regarding engineering and I had a lot of fun!

       For the third milestone I attached the solar pi platter, solar panel and the battery that would be charged by the solar panel to the rest of my project. The raspberry pi zero attaches on top of the pi platter and connects though 4 metal spring pins as seen in figure 2. The solar panel is attached to the pi platter as well as the battery it charges which then powers the raspberry pi that is attached as seen in figure 1. I then uploaded the code for the time-lapse to the raspberry pi. In order to take a timelapse I had to use a feature on the pi platter called Real Time Clock (RTC) which could track the current time and date. This feature was crucial to coding a time-lapse because it allowed the raspberry pi to schedule when to take the next picture for the timelapse. 

        To start a timelapse you would turn the switch off (notice in figure 1) which tells the pi to start the code that is already uploaded onto it. The code basically tells the camera to turn on take a photo then turn off in one minute intervals. These pictures will then show up in a folder on the pi which can later be combined to create a timelapse. If you turn this switch on it will run the pi as a normal raspberry pi.

        One issue I had was that I had trouble connecting the pi platter and raspberry pi, notice this connection in figure 2. I tried many different processes such as attaching the ground, 3.3 volt and 5 volt pins together with wires in the corresponding pins on the raspberry pi 3 and the pi platter. This created a line of power that flowed from the raspberry pi to the pi platter where I was trying to get the pi platter to charge the raspberry pi. I also tried finding specific wires that would attach from the pi platter to the rpi but, in the end when I tried to program on the rpi it said that the pi platter, “could not be found.” After visiting many sites about the solar pi platter and the connections between it and rpi I could only find information regarding the rpi zero edition. This led me to resulting in switching from the rpi 3, which was not connecting, and to the rpi zero. 

           From this milestone I learned more about the solar pi platter and solar panels. I learned how solar panels work to create energy to then be stored in a battery that powers the rest. I learned that something like a pi platter is needed to also transport and store the energy from one place to another. I also learned a little about python, how to schedule when to take a picture using the RTC from the pi platter and how to preview the images from the camera onto a monitor screen. 

          Overall this project was really fun and rewarding in the end although it was challenging at some times. 

                                                                Design

          The second milestone of my main project was to get the camera to stream. I attached a camera module to the raspberry pi which captures whatever it sees and sends it to the raspberry pi which then streams the display on the screen (shown in figure 1.)

           The code I used to get the camera to stream is found in figure 2. I used this website (link here: https://picamera.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.13/recipes1.html) to help me code the camera. In lines 1 and 2 the language “from… import” is used. This language tells us to measure sleep in time and to use picamera, the raspberry pi program for connecting a camera. It then names the PiCamera as just camera. In line 5 the code resizes the size of whatever you would be recording. In line 6 the language “start_preview” starts the streaming of the camera onto the screen without recording anything. In line 8 it says “sleep(2)” which causes the camera to “sleep” or wait for 2 seconds before starting up.

          From this milestone I learned a little about how to control the camera with python. One issue I had was that when I first started streaming the camera, everything was very blurry. I twisted the focus on the camera module and it gradually became more and more into focus, in figure 1 you can see what it looks like after it was in focus.