19. Project development¶
Assignment
This week's assignment was to complete your final project, tracking your progress by answering the following questions: What tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain? What's working? What's not? What questions need to be resolved? What will happen when? What have you learned?
1. What tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?
So far, I have completed the development of each component of my final project except for the enclosure that all of the parts will be contained in. There is currently one week remaining in the program, providing me with ample time to complete this task. Currently, the interface is functioning as-planned in tandem with my input board. I also still need to wire my LCD when it arrives, though it continues to be delayed by the various carriers that are shipping these LCD's to the lab so I might have to come up with an alternative solution if these delays persist. I also still need to add a subtractive element of design to project, and I plan on using the vinyl cutter to create a Bitcoin logo in order to satisfy this requirement.
What's working? What's not?
Everything on the technology-side of my project is functioning as planned. The input board is receiving the UID's of RFID cards and printing them to serial and they are being used successfully on the Pi to parse through my database and locate matching cells of the database. Nothing is currently not working, though this potentially will change once I print the final version of my enclosure and attempt to embed all of my systems into this enclosure.
What questions need to be resolved?
Only one question remains at the moment: will all of my systems function correctly inside of my enclosure? Everything is functioning perfectly externally, so the embedded aspect of my project will be the final test of its success. The prints for the final components of my enclosure are running as I am writing this, and will finish with five days remaining in the program, providing me with ample time to iterate upon the design that I am currently using if necessary.
What will happen when?
As mentioned in the answer to the previous question, both of my prints for my final enclosure will be completed early in the morning of June 12, leaving me with four days to debug my project inside of the enclosure and await the arrival of my LCD. I plan on installing all of my electronics into my system tomorrow, June 12th, giving me four days to await the arrival of my LCD, wire the LCD, and complete my documentation for my final project, including the creation of my final video and final slide which can only be completed after the arrival of the LCD. I hope to complete everything with at least a day to spare for final debugging prior to my presentation on June 16th.
What have you learned?
In terms of basic principles of constructing projects on the scale of mine, I have learned a basic maxim of this level of construction: everythings takes significantly longer than you expect it to. By applying this principle and devoting almost all of my time to Fab over the course of the coming days I plan to complete my project with a significant amount of extra time. I have also learned many new things about serial communication between C++ boards and Python systems, which will certainly prove immensely useful throughout many of the future endeavors that I have planned after Fab.
Following My Final Project Schedule
Throughout the course of the design and fabrication process of my final project, I adhered to the schedule that I created during week 17 in order to ensure that I completed all of my work on time. Having finished my final project at the time of the writing of this section of this week's page, I can attest to the immense usefulness of this schedule in keeping me on task throughout the courese of the several weeks that I labored tirelessly on my final project.