Events Reader

This is a device made to read student ID's and check them against events registrations.

Hardware platform

The hardware platform is a Raspberry Pi Pico 2W (RP2350 MCU with wireless module) with a ST25DV16 for reading NFC tags and a SPI module for MicroSD cards.

Getting started with the firmware

General architecture:

• The idea is a series of subsystems working together to make the device run. Subsystems can either by synchronous or asynchronous. Sync subsystems run on Core 0, whereas async subsystems run on Core 1.
• The following subsystems will exist:
  • networking/ - async subsystem handling network requests
  • storage/ - async subsystem handling storage operations
  • domain/ - both sync and async subsystem handling domain logic
  • nfc/ - sync subsystem handling reading nfc tags

To build the firmware on NixOS (or with the Nix package manager with flakes enabled)

• nix develop
• Hold the BOOTSEL button, and plug the device into a USB port on your computer.
• cd firmware && make build
• It will then build the firmware to a .uf2 file in firmware/build/
• From there you should mount and copy the .uf2 file into the drive
  • sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt && sudo cp build/*.uf2 /mnt && sudo umount /mnt
• You've now flashed the firmware to the board!

TODOs:

Hardware TODOs:

• Build a debugger with another Pico to allow me to access SWD logs.
• Build the rest of the hardware platform prototype.
• Make proper schematics for the device (include in hardware/schematics/).
• Design a 3D printed case for the device (include in hardware/case/).
• Add a battery and allow the device to be used headlessly.

Firmware TODOs:

• Write the networking subsystem.
• Write the NFC subsystem.
• Write the storage subsystem.
• Write the domain logic subsystem.