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18. Project Development

Individual Assignment

  1. What tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?
  2. What’s working? what’s not?
  3. What questions need to be resolved?
  4. What will happen when?
  5. What have you learned?

What tasks have been completed, and what remains?

Tasks completed; 1. Designing and printing the fountain tip and fountain body.
2. Final Project board designing, printing and soldering.
3. Programming and testing the final project board.
4. Testing and managing the water flow from the DC pump.
5. Speaker and audio testing.
6. Laser cutting the box for Electronics.
7. Getting a feasible glass bowl for the fountain.

Tasks remaining to be completed; 1. Finalizing the presentation slide.
2. Finalizing the presentation video.
3. Assembling and testing the fountain.
4. Vinyl cutting the project logo.

What’s working? what’s not?

Whats working?; 1. Project board is working.
2. Programming is fine.
3. Connections are right.
Almost everything is working.

What’s not?; 1. The audio file needs to be converted to c-code to make it playable from the speaker so I am having a tough time making the audio file that I want to upload. Simple tones are working but my favorite songs aren’t working when I tried to upload the C-code of those audio files.

  1. The DC pump flow was too high for my prototype. At first I didnt know how to make the flow less but Suhas said to tape the inflow pipe so the flow is controlled for now. Trying to look for a better solution.

What questions need to be resolved?

The following questions needs to be resolved for my project development;

  1. Which microcontroller would best fit to be used for my final project?
  2. What could be the cheapest way to make my project standard plus affordable?
  3. How can I start making fountains bigger in size?
  4. How to make it sell if I start commercializing it?

What will happen when?

I am done with almost everything, just need to assemble all the parts, connect the electronics, the DC pump, Led strips and need to test. I am thinking of doing all this in athe coming week and if everything works, next week I will be done with the project.

What have you learned?

When it comes to learning, I have learned almost everything about digital fabrication process since I was a beginner back then when I started the Fab Academy course. The things I have learned are listed below;

  1. How to best use the 2D and 3D design softwares- Now that I am well aware of a lot of softwares, I sometimes play with them designing whatever I like and the design turns out to be good now like as if it was designed by a professional.

  2. Machine operation- Now I can comfortably use the laser cutter, 3D printers, SRM-20 PCB milling machine, Vinyl cutter, 3D scanner and CNC machine.

  3. Electronics designing and milling my own board- Now I can feel comfort in using the Eagle software to design PCBs, connect them and route them.

  4. Soldering.

  5. Programming- Now I know how to make my own programmer and which programmer to use for which microcontroller.

  6. Video editing.

  7. Image editing.

  8. Creating my own apps.

  9. Interfacing.

Most of all I learned to manange my time properly, planning and executing any tasks in hand. Thank you Fab Academy for making me a ‘Maker’.

Last update: July 9, 2022