Standing Meeting 7: Back in the Flow

Let's look at our progress from last week:

• Arik:
• Develop the way that we will implement having the database of lights control the Pi.
• Karl:
• Develop the method that will allow users to change the states of lights through the website. These changes must also then be reflected in the database. 
• Zach:
• Assist both Arik and Karl in accomplishing their goals
• Whole Group:
• Implement Snowball's success story.

Karl succeeded in plugging in functionality on the website so that users can alter the database of lights by selecting which ones they want to be on and then saving their selection. Arik suffered a more terrible fate, as his goal was less clearly defined than Karl's. Figuring out how we will integrate the Raspberry Pis into our databases is proving to be slightly more difficult than we had anticipated. We are fairly certain that we want the application to be run on the client side. This way if the internet service provider experiences an outage, the user would still be able to alter the state of lights in their house. Unfortunately, this probably means that we will have to look into some sort of mirroring system to keep the Company and the client side databases identical. We will describe the details of that problem as we ourselves become more familiar with them.

Karl found great benefits to having Zach as a "roamer" in the group. Being able to voice ideas out loud helped him to more quickly identify the problem and find a solution. 

Going forward, we of course have set more goals:

• Arik:
• Clean up the parts of the website that do not yet implement Twitter bootstrap code. 
• Karl:
• Help both Arik and Zach work towards their goals. Develop unit tests to keep our code maintainable.
• Zach:
• Explore a possibility regarding how we might be able to connect the Raspberry Pis to the database.
• Whole Group:
• Connect the entire system so that a user can alter a light through the website and see the result on the Raspberry Pi.

That's all for now, happy coding!