Meeting Summaries

1st Meeting Monday 14/10/02 (with Arvind):

Went through what project will involve and group members outlined their strengths and weaknesses.  Forum for group was setup. 

2nd Meeting Wednesday 16/10/02:

Decided our project should be a Bluetooth based modular file sharing system, which will be able to play music
(in .ogg format) by either streaming or downloading it from a neighbouring device. We decided all available files should be listed together whether they are stored locally on the device or on a neighbouring  device.  We also discussed the possibility of listing files several “hops” away and decided this could be implemented as an extension. 

The owner of the device should be able to specify the permissions of the files stored on their device. The user should be able to specify for each file whether they want it  downloadable, streamable or unavailable.

Other modules may be available to support other file formats, but this is considered an extension.

Basic user and modular diagram produced.

3rd Meeting Monday 21/10/02 (demonstration with Arvind):

Had fundamentals of project explained including board setup. Board has no graphics/sound capability so some thought needed on design implementation. A possible idea proposed was building a simple sound card in hardware using a digital to analogue converter although this may involve compromising some sound quality. Some discussion on the interface implementation and whether a graphical implementation would be practical/desirable.

The following rough areas were initially assigned to people:

User Interface (design/graphical implementation)/Website – Jennie
User Interface (communication with board) – Gavin
File Management System – Andy
File Sharing /Communications – Bob/Henrik
Music Player – Ben 

Interfaces for each section to be produced for next meeting.

4th Meeting Friday 25/10/02:

Interfaces between each module were compared. An overall class diagram showing these interfaces to be produced for next meeting.

5th Meeting Monday 28/10/02: 

Have taken charge of the board.  Is now kept in a locker in the main room of the CS lab. All group members should have a key. 

Members were asked to explain their roles in more detail. Some issues that were raised were whether the user interface should be written in C or Java, which has to be looked into in more detail by Jennie.  The amount of memory required for .ogg file decoding and file storage was of some concern (it is estimated we will have around 3.8 MB of available memory) but it is thought this should be acceptable so long as small test files are used. The amount of memory available for file storage should be maximised wherever possible as the main issues when designing software for embedded devices are the memory space available and response times of the device. 

The web space has been made available and a basic website should be produced for the next meeting with meeting summaries and project milestones.

6th Meeting Monday 4/11/02 (with Arvind):

Discussed progress and implementation plans for each module.
Interfaces should be published on personal websites and skeletal code (method headings) finished for Friday.  Those who haven't familiarized themselves with the board need to do so (see Robert’s website).
The project milestones should be made more detailed.  It may be best to do this by including individual goals in peoples' report websites.

7th Meeting Monday 11/11/02 (with Arvind):

Header files were completed and made available (see Interface/Header Browser).
Some compiling issues for eCos were raised, and questions regarding eCos should be directed towards Andy.  Module message passing has not yet been achieved and work should be commenced to get individual modules communicating.  

Individual coding should be started for Friday.  If possible message passing between modules should also be looked into.

8th Meeting Monday 18/11/02 (with Arvind):

Individual coding on the whole is making significant progress with basic systems constructed and working for Andy and Bob.  A request was made for a way of directly comparing interfaces for different modules on the website.  This has been implemented in the form of the Interface/Header Browser. 

Message passing was stated as a priority and Jennie-Gavin and Henrik-Bob should have their inter-module communications up and working for Mondays meeting.

9th Meeting Monday 25/11/02 (with Arvind):

Bob has got the Buffering system finished and the link manager designed.

Henrik has a few things to finish off that depend on the Bluetooth Communication Module.

Ben has got the decoding of .ogg format music files to work on Linux.  He will now start to get it to working correctly on the board.

Gavin is having  a little trouble with eCos' handling of threads.  It seems that a thread needs to explicitly give up control if it is waiting for something (no wait loops) as otherwise no other thread can run.
Priority of threads has to be set carefully as higher priority threads always run first.  Normal thread priority is 10.
Threads should be designed so the maximum time possible is spent blocked.

Jennie has finished the unintegrated version of the GUI and will now work on integrating it with Gavin's serial communication module.  Also confirmation of deletion of files should be added.

10th Meeting Monday 2/12/02 (with Arvind):

The bluetooth communication module has developed some problems recently resulting in packets not being transferred reliably.  It is possible this is due to Andy's code and Ben will contact him to try fix the problem.
However apart from this the individual code for the Bluetooth Communication Module is finished and will be integrated next week.

The File Sharing Module is coming along well and is almost finished.  There have been a few memory problems but Henrik will be contacting Andy to try and resolve them.

The File Management Module needed to some code rewritten to deal with the deletion of files from the system.  There have also been some issues with the running of two simultaneous devices to demonstrate the system.  It has been suggested that two versions of the File Sharing (inc. Bluetooth Comms) and File Management Modules should run, with a GUI connected (via the serial port) to only one of the File Sharing and File Management modules (see diagram below).

System Demonstration Module Diagram (IE only)
System Demonstration Module Diagram (all browsers)

Some of the Music Module code is working on the board however more work needs to be done to add functionality.

The Serial Communication module is progressing, with the PC side almost complete.  However the board side needs more work.

The GUI and serial comms  modules now pass messages between them successfully.  However there are expected errors as the serial comms module is not yet complete.

Group members should prepare slides for the presentation on Thursday.  Jennie will prepare a slide template and send it to all group members.

Presentation slide template (ppt format).

11th Meeting Monday 9/12/02 (demonstration with Arvind):

This meeting was held on the labs in order to demonstrate parts of our system. 

The GUI was demonstrated.  It was not however connected to the Serial Communication Module as this module was still not completed.

The File Sharing Module, integrated with the Bluetooth Communication Module was demonstrated. 

The current state of the system is that the GUI,  File Sharing, File Management and Bluetooth Communcation modules are completed and the File Sharing and Bluetooth Comms Modules have been integrated successfully.  The above modules however have been unable to integrate themselves fully with the Serial Communications Module as this module is not yet finished. 

The Music Decoding Module is working on Linux and more work is being done to try and allow it to work on the board.