NickAndNate summer project

[sgdavis1]

Track progress of summer project for Nick Hageman and Nate Schaefer

[sgdavis1]

Meeting on 5/25

Progress update

• First meeting since starting, no progress was intended

Goals for next meeting

1. Fork repository
2. Independently get Node/Express web application to correctly start, and POST new sensorVal value
3. Improve web application in any way

[sgdavis1]

Meeting on 6/02

Progress update

• Code has been forked: https://github.com/Nick-Hageman/plant-hydration-monitor
• Hardware has been delivered
• Both dev environments are setup
• Initial mockups for web page improvements have been completed in static HTML / CSS

Goals next meeting

• Send data from module to the web app
• Adding more saved sensor values to web app memory
• Display current sensor values on web app home page

[sgdavis1]

Meeting on 6/09

Progress update

Nick had run into trouble with the Express server so moved ahead with a lot of great work connecting the site with Firebase so that he could add some functionality to the webpage using JavaScript to both write and read to/from a database hosted on Firebase. We discussed the implications of this (modules would need access to the internet to store values) and decided to make a goal of reworking the code so that it can contact the local Express server instead. We also discussed the future need of adding a lightweight (sqlite) database to the Node/Express system so that we can store the state of the sensors more permanently.

Goals for next meeting

• Communicate with Express web server
• Add sensor data
• Display Express data web server
• Adding sqlite database to Express (stretch goal)

[sgdavis1]

Meeting on 6/16

Progress update

Some progress on creating a local database using Sequelize:

• Integrated sequelize into the project
• Added a database schema
• Configured sqlite3 usage

Goals for next meeting

• Look for ways to uniquely identify each wireless module
• Define plants / saturation values / and any other necessary data models
• Create AJAX call to get saturation from Express server API

[sgdavis1]

Meeting on 6/23

Progress update

Decided MAC address would be a useful unique identifier for modules. Worked with Sequelize on the front-end and learned a few basics of data models and even setup a data dictionary to store a stateful representation of the sensor values in the browser memory. Since this is not the direction the code should be heading it was a good learning experience but the next weeks work will be to adjust the server side code to support Sequelize and the data models on the server instead of in the browser. We talked through the details of how this would work and looked at some examples and code documentation on the main Sequelize home page.

Goals for next week

• Familiarize more with Sequelize (Read through all of the Core Concepts )
• Reorganize the code to instantiate a sqlite database on the server at startup time
• Redefine the data models to include a Plant has-many Value models
• Update the POST handler to record data values from the module as a Sequelize object

[sgdavis1]

Meeting on 6/30

Progress update

Lots of learning and code reorganization, created a working front end. Learned a lot about Sequelize and relational databases. Talked about pull requests and reiterated the importance of creating a new "clean" branch.

Goals for next week

• Redesign the database schema to have relationships (1 Plant to-many Moistures)
• Reorganize the code to support new database schema
• Replace models/index.js with javascript generated by Sequelize
• Display name and location and data all on the front-end
• Look closer at the API design and improve to be more explicit and include timestamps

[sgdavis1]

Meeting on 7/07

Progress update

Nick was able to get the 1 to many relationship between plants, and the DB schema is updated. Worked on models/index.js but didn't get this completed. Added an API call (two new controllers) so that plants can be added / removed from the front end and the front end grabs the data by calling the API now.

Using ChartJS to do the graphing on the front-end (Great work!!). Still working through the front-end AJAX calls.

Goals for next week

• Address Steve's reorganization comments
• Fix the cascading deletes
• Add ability to upload plant images and store in the server database as a BLOB
• Update the plant moisture on the front-end with an AJAX call

[sgdavis1]

Meeting on 7/14

Progress update

Nick did some file renaming and is still working on more code reorganization. Worked on storing plant images as a BLOB in the database, learned a lot. Multipart forms are quirky. Worked on the models/index.js generated file.

Goals for next week

• Reading up on jQuery and adding this to more of the front-end code (public/js) https://learn.jquery.com/using-jquery-core/
• Continuing reorganization based on new comments
• Fix the upload form, and store in the server database as a BLOB
• Add the generated models/index.js from Sequelize

[sgdavis1]

Meeting on 7/21

Progress updates

Nick is making some progress on jQuery implementation throughout the project. Added a document "ready" event handler and "click" handlers. Added an api folder for controllers. Still working on getting the binary data to correctly POST to the web application.

Goals for next week

Defer the effort on the upload of the plant image until after the first accepted Pull Request

• Add the generated models/index.js from Sequelize
• Finish code reorganization
• Submit first PR for review (Sequelize and DB implementation, nothing else)

[sgdavis1]

Meeting on 8/12

Final meeting to wrap up the project for the summer! Reviewed and accepted the pull request, then tested it locally with a simple debug controller. Congrats @Nick-Hageman and @Nate-Schaefer !!