Capstone Project

Access Control and Inventory Management Software Design and Implementation with Python on Raspberry Pi 4. The Smart Cabinet will be placed in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Lab at UMASS Lowell, used by ECE students and Lab admins, and owned by the ECE lab instructor.

Here is a list of what I accomplished during this project:

0- Complete Design of the Cabinet's Software functionality and the way it is interfaced with

1- Complete online/offline functionality of the Cabinet. (Usability, Availability, Resilience, Reliability)

2- Exceptional software performance (Responsiveness, Usability):

. a - Multi-threaded online API calls

. b- Application objects sync with online Access info every 1-2 minutes: objects always up-to-date

. c- Use of Dictionaries (look-up tables): Constant-time search - Highly scalable.

. d- Effective cooling solution to RPi

3- Comprehensive, readable, easy-to-parse Inventory Log and Access Info, which can be accessed/modified anywhere online by the product's owner. (Usability)

4- Admin Application to provide a lower level of Access control. Lab TA's may use this when in lab to provide access to students, admins, or to add inventory to be tracked. (Usability)

5- Admin Application GUI built with Material Design principles, which serves as a user-friendly interface to the Cabinet. (Usability)

6- Minimum user education (Usability)

. a - Accepts a students Roster to generate students name suggestions . b - Can be mostly used with keyboard to further speed up addition process