1. Interactive Schedule Builder
ECE Computer Engineering Design Project
Interactive Schedule Builder
Elias Carter, Joshua White, Salim Ben Khaled, Scott Wowk
2017
Motivation
Beartracks has an unwieldy schedule builder
Adding a class to a schedule requires many clicks and redirects to different web pages
Feedback loop of adding a class or changing a section and then viewing the new schedule is large
Resolving timing conflicts and trying different class permutations requires the user to repeat all the steps to remove and re-add classes
Objectives
Create a website where schedule building can be done on a single page without redirects
Provide instantaneous visual feedback when adding a class or changing a section via a live updating schedule view
Implement persistence so the user can return to a saved schedule and continue modifying it
Prototype a LCD hardware display which interfaces with the schedule building website to present the built schedule to the user
LCD Hardware Display
The LCD hardware display is based upon the Altera DE2 platform, IP cores, and a 640x480 VGA display. To display a schedule image, the hardware platform receives a bitmap image through the SD card interface and then decodes the image to raw RGB values. Finally, the raw pixel data is copied over to the VGA frame buffer to display the image on the LCD screen.
Fig. 3 Typical view of schedule building page
Schedule Building Website
The schedule building website has three main pages: the “login page” where the user enters their username; the user page which contains a form to create a new schedule, or links to saved schedules; and finally, the schedule page which contains all the schedule building activities.
In the schedule page, there is an area to search for classes by name (say ECON 101) and view those search results in the neighbouring column. The user can then opt to add one of the search results to the schedule. After a class is added to a schedule, the class section (say EB1) can then be toggled via dropdowns. If the user no longer wants the class in their schedule, they can hit the “-” button to remove it. All of these updates to the schedule are reflected in real time via the live schedule view.
The schedule website uses the Classtime API (see the “More Information” section) in order to retrieve class data for schedule building.
Interfacing
To send a schedule image from the website to the hardware platform a SD card interface is used. When the “Download To Board” button is hit on the website, the live schedule DOM objects are converted to a base64 encoded bitmap image. The client side Javascript then constructs a bitmap file from the base64 encoded image and downloads it to the user’s computer. The image is saved to a SD card and then inserted into the hardware platform.
For colour ideas, University Visual Identity Guidelines can be found here:
More Information
Project Github:
Classtime API:
Fig. 1 Workflow for adding a class to a schedule through Beartracks
Fig. 2 LCD hardware displaying a schedule image
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering