Project Dissemination Plan¶
This week, I will be devising a plan for completing my final project, which is a tennis ball machine.
Assignment Directions:¶
- Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project.
- Prepare drafts of your summary slide (presentation.png, 1920x1080) and video clip (presentation.mp4, 1080p HTML5, < ~minute, < ~10 MB) and put them in your root directory.
Master Plan¶
I didn’t have the opportunity to create this master plan until 12/27/23, which is 7 months after the date on which I should have created itk, during the end of may. The reason for this being that I was overwhelmed during that week of exams and projects. During subsequent months, I was still catching up on various weeks (I am rolled over and expected to graduate by the beginning of summer on 2024). On the other hand, I already have completed part of my tennis machine during the months of July and August:
- Assembled part of the main frame.
- Attached the wheels, shaft, coupling, and flange to the frame.
- Attached the motors to the frame.
- Got the motors to work by themselves (part of the programming aspect).
- Printed numerous 3D parts for awkward connections.
My plan for the following weeks are:
12/28-29: Finishing documenting my work on the ball machine during July and August.
12/30-31: Finish the 3D CAD design of the ball machine
12/31-1/1: Update/finish the programming aspect of the project
1/1-1/2: Finish the tube that feeds the balls into the wheels.
Rest of January: Complete 3D structures and connectors, complete the programming, mill out the board, and laser cut the electronics cover.
February: Create the stand and sticker, finish the project.
Licensing¶
This webiste provided insight to what licenses are and how they work. Essentially, they are agreements between the author of the project and the user in that the user has to site or credit certain aspects of the project when they decide to modify it. Different licenses provide different degrees of restrictions upon the user and how much of the original project they can borrow.
I decided to use the Apache License 2.0 because it is not too restrictive nor too permissive:
- The source code doesn’t need to be public when a distribution of the software is made.
- Modifications to the software can be release under any license.
- Changes made to the source code must be documented.
- It offers the same patent usage protection as GPLv3.
- It explicitly prohibits the use of trademarked names found in the project.
I have included the license here
Summary Slide¶
Taking inspiration from Barbara Morrow, the template that she made is a draft and denotes locations where she planned to implement pictures of various parts of the project, which can be viewed here. I used Google Slides to make the project, which can be viewed below.
Here is the draft of my summary slide:
Video Clip¶
Taking inspiration from Barbara Morrow’s video draft, I decided to follow the same format by drawing a diagram of my project on Notability, and explain the workings of the ball machine.
I also realized that all of my video clips on my website are just GIFs and don’t contain any volume. I referenced Adam Stone’s website and found that he formats most of his video clips like so:
<video src = " " controls = "controls" style = "max-width: 8730px;">
</video>
However, this didn’t work. I then visited this Fab site as well as this Github issue page to get ideas. In Terminal, I installed ffmpeg through the command: brew install ffmpeg I realized that this is the correct format:
<video width="400" controls>
<source src="../../images/video.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>
I then added one more .../ in the beginning of the source according to the Github page. Here is my video:
This way, the video will be embedded in an iframe, which also includes the pause button and slider.
- My local instructor, David Taylor often finds that my videos don’t work when I import them straight in as a regular format. And so, I have to put them into my documentation using the format as described above.
Future Possibilities¶
Right now, my main focus and priority is to complete the final project. However, I do have some ideas about what to do after the completion:
- Improve upon the ball machine so that it can fire tennis balls left and right. This could be done with a servo motor built at the base. An alternative would be manually install a knob of some sort and turn the machine manually.
- Create a automatic feeder. I can use a solenoid to feed the balls in one by one. The solenoid’s feed rate could also be controlled via the Raspberry Pi Pico.