Anika_BSE_Portfolio
This is a template portfolio for the students attending the BlueStamp Engineering program.
Smart Mirror Project
I am using a raspberry pi model to make a Smart Mirror that displays useful things for my everyday life! The monitor is going to run a program that I wrote from scratch, using react and electron and display the information on the mirror. I am going to put the following modules on the mirror: date/time, to do list, music, photo album slide show, text notifications.
| Engineer | School | Area of Interest | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anika M | Harker Upper School | Business & Computer Science | Rising Junior |
Reflection
My time at BlueStamp was both fun and extremely informative. I learned so many new things from what a Rasperry Pi is and to how to use an API. Although I did not get to finish everything that I had planned for my Smart Mirror project, I learned so much and I’m very proud of what I was able to make in just three weeks. I really value all the lessons I learned this summer and I know that I will be using them again in the future. If you scroll below, you can see my journey working on this project and how I was able to tackle the problems I ran into.
Smart Mirror Monitor
Final Design
Base Code Design
Final Milestone
I reached my final milestone! My goal for this milestone was to format all the components on the screen in a visually aesthetic way, following the sketch I had previously made, and glue the physical peices of the mirror together. I was able to experiment with colors, fonts, and sizes until I was finally satisfied with how it looked. Unfortunately, I was not able to glue the mirror onto the monitor before my 3 weeks at BlueStamp was over. However, I am planning to finish that up and work on some additional components for my smart mirror as well. The components I want to add are the music player and text notification. With all the knowledge I gained at BlueStamp, I feel confident in my ability to keep improving the smart mirror. In the video below, I will be presenting my Smart Mirror, explaining my journey working on this project, and talking about this final milestone. Thank you so much for following me on this journey!
Second Milestone
I reached my second milestone today! I finished working on the software and writing the code on Visual Studio Code. I have made the components for the time/date, todo list, and photo album, but because of time constraints, I am not going to be making the music player and text notifications components. If I have extra time after finishing my third milestone, I will add the music component. Writing the todo list code was the most difficult because I had to connect the API to my google calendar. However, the other two, time/date and photo album, were much easier. The layout of the monitor is similar to my sketch, and I am ready to place all of my parts together and finish my third milestone soon.
Display Sketch
While waiting for my software to download, I decided to made a sketch of the monitor display and layout of my additions. My initial design (the top one) was much more cramped, with everything on one side. But after realizing that the monitor is only 7 inches, I changed the sketch (bottom one) to be more spread out and have all the icons larger. Another thing that I changed between the two drafts is the color scheme. In my final draft I kept the color scheme more simple, pink on the right and green on the left, which is much more aesthetic than my first attempt.
Initial Design
Final Design
First Milestone
I have reached my first milestone! This milestone was just getting the base project and code to work. Before reaching this milestone, I had to set up the raspberry pi, install the Node.js software, and finally run the base code. The hardest step was setting up the raspberry pi because I didnt have a keyboard to help me set up and connect to wifi. However, I found a solution to help me: I used my hotspot and put a simple password so that I could copy and paste it into the monitor with just my mouse. After setting up the Raspberry Pi, I installed Node.js throught the terminal in VNC viewer. Finally, I ran the base code and I was so happy when everything worked! Even though the first step was really difficult and discouraging when I couldn’t set up my Pi, I am really proud of myself for getting to this first milestone! The video below includes a demo showing how the base code runs on my Raspberry Pi.
