January Status Update

Hello! I’ve sort of fallen off the bandwagon with these status updates, I think mainly because of a lot of other work including college applications and schoolwork. I’d like to get back to doing them as a regular thing, sort of documenting what I’m working on from month-to-month.

Given that I’ve skipped three months, this status update will be a little longer than usual.

College

Kicking things off with probably the biggest development, I’ve been accepted to and have committed to attend Worcester Polytechnic Institute as part of the Class of 2025! This is big, since WPI was my first choice. I’m super excited to go there this fall.

Constantine Rewrite

This has been progressing slowly. I’m running into issues regarding Postgres connections blocking the main event loop. I think it’s an issue with not closing connections at the end of commands that use the ORM connection. I need to write a function that runs at the end of every SQL command to close the connection.

FLL-Scoring

This has morphed from its’ original design. I’m working on sketches for a hardware component to make it easier for referees to enter the scores. I’m basing it off of the scoring pedestals that come with the FRC fields that the referees use to enter fouls, penalties, and the endgame scores.

I’m thinking of a network of Raspberry Pi 3 or 4s, with keyboards and touchscreens, in a custom box that can be clamped on to each table. They’d be powered with power over ethernet, which will also be used to connect them to a private network that also hosts the server.

This has led to a redesign of the software side of the project. Instead of being a microservice architecture that’s designed to be served over the internet, it’s going to be similar to the current standard software, in that it runs on the local network.

The CSS isn’t the prettiest but it’s a start (and it’s better than anything I’ve done previously!). I’m really excited because this project has already taught me more about CSS and web apps.

Like I said, not the best design, but it’s a prototype. I’d like to get some help with making it look nice before I mark it as ready for production, but that can come once the functionality is down.

This Site

I’m thinking of redesigning this site a little bit. I’d like to put my own spin on the design instead of using someone else’s. We’ll see how that goes though!

That about does it for what I’ve been working on over the past three months. I’ll see you (hopefully) next month for another status update!