So I have been super busy with school and work for the past months, and basically have no time to write blog, but basically, here is a recap of my project:
- The Arduino Kit arrived a while ago...Huge thank to element14, Adafruit and MathWork for their generosity! Everything was in the best shape possible, except for the IR Distance sensor that did not arrive with a cable (I still couldn't find a cable, so I am just gonna not use it for the project 
)
- There is an unboxing video, but it's not very interesting so I am probably not gonna post it. I have tons of photos though, but I probably will post in a separate blog, cause it takes a while to upload a photo or video here.
- The robot can basically detect and follow a black marker line, or just a predefined path, which is essential for the handing out quizzes task. It uses a line tracking sensor to accomplish this. I got it online, and here is a picture of the sensor:
- Since I don't have a Pi Cam, I figure that I could use an iPhone as a camera instead. I basically want to use a camera on the robot to detect movement, so that the robot knows and alerts the teacher when a student raises his or her hand to ask a question, or leaves the seat without permission to cause trouble. Hence, I decided to write an iOS app using opencv library to do the video processing part, and then communicate with the robot via Bluetooth
- The app is basically done. The iPhone can detect movement and play an alarm every time a student raise their hand or move around
Here is a demo video:
- The hardest part, however, was to get the phone to communicate with the robot. I am still struggling with this part, as I still couldn't even blink an LED connected to the Arduino by pressing a button on the iPhone. I am using a bluetooth module that I got from a flea market, not a BLE shield, so that might explain why. But still, I got the bluetooth module to connect to the phone, it just refuses to send or receive any data. Still trying to figure this out, but at this rate, the robot and the iPhone might have to be 2 separate independent parts.
- Still trying to get all the photos from my phone to my computer. I took too many photos and videos, and now my computer is running out of empty space...