Project Development

In this week, a dissemination plan for the final project must be developed, along with drafts of summary slide or video clip of the final project presentation. While looking for various project planning websites online, many of which may offer a trial or even require a payment in exchange for their services. I wanted to develop a project plan without going through the hassle of making everything from scratch. I decided to use EXCEL program, and through the program I created a new file, and searched for project planning templates. After trying several templates I came across Gantt Project Chart which was easy two use with two sheets. In the project tracker sheet, a table with start date and end date is found for every activity, the table has been edited as required. In the project chart sheet, the table from the previous sheet is converted into a chart presented on two axis.

The start date was 8th of May with the first task marked with getting ready for the final project. In the start phase, there was a lot of brainstorming on how the solution can be rapidly prototyped using what we learned with efforts made in previous assignments. In the week after, a component list was made for all components required, including potential components just to be on the safe side. In 3D designing phase, was a never ending-phase honestly, because there will always be a little more details to be included in the design. In those 10 days, Almost every component required was designed. In the phase after, the programming phase, previously produced ATMEGA328P was programmed to communicate with MATLAB's IDE and to control the stepper motor based on signals obtained from the time-of-flight sensor. In the presentation phase, which consisted of 5 days, all documented efforts were included in the presentation poster and video. Although working on the presentation may take 2 to 3 hours work. However, it is important to aim for finishing earlier to have time to improve any critical aspect of the project, or for unforeseen circumstances.

Some aspects of the project has been done from before. The object detector, based on convolutional neural network has been developed previously as part of my Master's thesis through MATLAB, this part only requires interfacing MATLAB and ATMEGA328P using serial communication. In addition, the ATMEGA328P was produced and interfaced with the input sensor of Time-of-Flight during Input Devices week.

Fabricating the wood structure, and 3D brackets, along with assembling the time of belt system is yet to be done. Embedded programming part which includes the control algorithm of the platform is yet to be made. The control algorithm includes code to serially establish a serial communication with the laptop through MATLAB's IDE.

Two things I am concerned about, first is establishing serial communication with MATLAB's IDE. Previously in Interface and Application Programming week, serial communication has been established, however I was not able to control how the serial communication was established, not in the sense of specifying a COM port, or the baud rate, but in the sense of controlling the hand-shake process. In that example, only the same data is sent over the COM port to be displayed on MATLAB, but what is required in the future is the following, if the output value is A initiate the following if statement, if the output value is B then initiate the next if statement and so on. Another thing which I am worried about is fabricating wood parts using the CNC machine, as in Computer-Controlled Machining I had some difficulties finishing the assignment especially during the press-fitting stage of the assignment. Hopefully those two concerns will be resolved during the specified phase of the final project according to the schedule devised earlier.