Day 27

Day 27

Forgot Home Pages

Added Home Pages!
How could I forget to have Home Pages. I researched how to have fields autocompleted with Barcodes. I just have to sit down and make buttons. I will spend an hour tomorrow putting the buttons in.

Day 26

Day 26

Almost Done

I spent a long time today copying and pasting and resizing and editing color schemes. I decided to change all the mentions of student to Maker to make it sound like everyone is on an equal ground, plus teachers will have to sign in through there. This process just took a long time. I will have to write my presentation tomorrow

Day 24

Day 24

Deadline Approaching

Its Thursday and the deadline is fast approaching. I met with Mr. Hwang yesterday. He liked what I had done and gave me the all clear to create the mobile pages. I plan on coming over the summer to conduct the actual inventory. Mr. Hwang asked if we could expand it to encompass the Lower and Middle School Technology Departments as well. The only concern he brought up would be teacher use of the system. Teachers don't have an ID and I use the student IDs as the marker for the profile. So either we have to make another profile for teachers or assign the teacher an ID.

Day 22

Day 22

Interim

I set up a meeting with Mr. Hwang for tomorrow at lunch. I want to meet with him and have him proof and sign off on my database before I copy it to the iPhone layout and the iPad layout because then any edits I do I have to do three times instead of just once. As a result I was hesitant to start copying, so I will do that tomorrow. I need to get IT to give me a PC copy of FileMaker Pro and to set it up in the Makers Lab. I also need to input enough data to make a good demo for the defense.

Day 21

Day 21

More Roadblocks

I spoke to IT again today and they have some security concerns with my database. Since it is the same system comments are stored on, there is a tiny chance that a student using the database could accidentally access the comments. To fix this Mr. Hamrick suggested that I use an offline database until they can address those concerns over the summer. They will also be updating the server so that the IOS application can access the database.

Day 20

Day 20

ALL DAY

I spent all day working. I woke up at 8:00 and started working on my online class. I finished up with that by 11:00. I took a quick breakfast break and then buckled down on this project. By 4:00 I had the database built and pretty. Everything works and communicates with each other. I am going to bring it by IT to get help accessing it from other accounts and moving it to the computer in the lab.
This week I also have to set up pages that would work with an app so that when we update the server the database will be accessible.

Day 18

Day 18

Break

I did not have any free periods today and then went to a live show at the Atlanta Symphony Hall of Welcome to Night Vale. I'll catch up over the weekend.

Day 17

Day 17

(insert clever title here)

I didn't get much done. I spent maybe an hour on the aesthetics for the database, but I had to study for Calculus. I will spend a lot of time this weekend finalizing the database.

Day 16

Day 16

A Few Issues

So I went back to IT today. They were able to upload my database to the server but we ran into a few problems.

1. If I want to view or edit the database I can't be on the Lovett network since the firewall blocks student access to the server. It works fine on any other wifi though. Mr. Hamrick says he should grant students the ability to access it by Friday.
2. The server Lovett has is running FileMaker Server 12. The IOS app only works with Server 13 and 14. The school has plans to update over the summer so the IOS app component cannot be integrated until next year.
3. I am rapidly running out of time.

In good news. The functionality behind the database is there. I built a data entry. I need to build the record viewer and corresponding Iphone and Ipad versions of each sheet.

The database is broken down into New Inventory Record, View Inventory Records, New Student Record, View Student Records, New Checkout, View current checkouts, View all checkouts.

I have built most of those pages for PC, now I have to do it for Iphone and for Ipad. It should be a lot of copy and paste but it will just take a lot of time. I will sit down over the weekend and hammer it out. I have to be done with the database by Sunday.

Day 14

Day 14

Getting Serious

I went through and watched hours of Lynda.com videos on data storage and how to manage data relationships in a relatable database like FileMaker Pro. I have now built the back end and linked the data fields together. Tomorrow I hope to finish the back end. I need to have the front end built by Friday and I will spend next week logging the current inventory.

Day 10-13

Day 10-13

Home at last

Well I have been gone with robotics since Wednesday so I have not have much time to work on my project. However since my last post I met with IT again and they got me FileMaker Pro 14, I built about half of the database, I generated a ton of barcodes, talked with the business office about the legality of using student ID's, I talked with Ms. Deisley and Mr. Hwang to expand the database to also keep records of student involvement as well as the inventory, and talked with a couple of robotics teams about how their inventory systems work and what they wish they had known when they built their systems.

Day 8

Day 8

Back to Work

I met with Mr. Hamrick this morning to discuss the logistics of up-keeping the server, how I would host it, and updating the inventory. My current plan had been to host a MAC based web server running a PHP protocol off of a desktop in the Maker's Lab. Mr. Hamrick said that it was possible to implement that but the computers are recycled with Apple every 3-5 years, so I would have to leave detailed instructions on how to reset it. The other idea he had was to use File Maker Pro, which Lovett already has a license to and dedicated server space to access. The only problem is I have never used it before. I am going to spend the rest of the day figuring out how to use the software.

Day 6-7

Day 6-7

No Work Weekend

Google has been laying fiber optic cable in my neighborhood for the last 4 days. On Friday at about 4:00 the workers accidentally severed our ethernet connection with AT&T. I was internetless Friday afternoon until this morning when AT&T was able to come out and repair the cable.

Day 5

Day 5

IDEA!!!!!

So I was researching late last night and I stumbled upon NASA's custom inventory management software. It runs off a server which is not ideal but it would work. The next problem I have is working with IT to set up the server to host the software. Currently Lovett's WiFi will not host PHP servers, which is what I need. Mr. Hamrick will get back to me tonight or tomorrow with whether or not we could set up a hidden wifi network for the server to run off of. I hope to set up and test the software next week.

Day 4

Day 4

Took a Break

I didn't have any time today to work on the project. I only had 5th period off today and I had to use it to get our robotics trip organized and then work on my online class. After school I took a nap because I have been exhausted lately and then I had to draft an email to the parents providing all of the details of our trip (Which took almost an hour). Then I took Jared home and took out my neighbors dog and ate dinner and now I am writing this blog post.

Day 3

Day 3

Got Inspired

I visited my scout troops closet where I originally got the idea for the project. They have it set up so that every scout has a bar code (Similar to our student ID's) and each item has a bar code which is both on the physical item and in a binder (see below). For smaller items items it would not be practical to label them so I would have to use the binder method for them but for larger objects taping a physical barcode to them is probably the best option.

The picture on the right is all of the scouts names with their corresponding bar codes to be used for check out. Instead of this I would just scan students ID's. The picture on the left is the labels for items they couldn't put barcodes on like utensils and camping gear.

Day 2

Day 2

Got Busy

So today was the first day I really go to work on the project itself. I spent a good chunk of the morning getting the footage from our short film shoot off of my computer but I was able to start research by about 1. I started by emailing a few people about the inventory system that was recently set up in our scout closet. Unfortunately the person who set up our system is out of town but he offered to talk via telephone tonight about how he did it. From there I proceeded to research what software is out there already that I could re-adapt. I looked at library management software but nothing I've found is within a reasonable price range. I will keep looking. I wish I had my PC back so I could be using Microsoft Access.
I am looking at using a software called redbeam. I will call them tomorrow to see if they do web hosting or if they only do hosting from a laptop and how well the ios app works with it.

Day 1

Day 1

The Start

Today is Monday April 4th. The internet was off first period of the day so I missed an hour of work. I have spent about an hour helping Caroline Carr and myself working with this website and downloading a template. I am not sure how I am going to do this project and I am a little jaded with this project already but I will work around it. I'll figure it out. It will be hard and this will probably take some tears but I will figure it out. I always do.