Week 18: Project Development

Assignment

Complete your final project, tracking your progress:

What tasks had been completed?

Fabrication of the final project (i.e. the flatpack PMD) was completed on 6th June 2023, with successful test runs carried out on the same day.

What tasks remain?

There were still some minor wire management issues that needed to be looked into. Other than that, what remained was the documentation of the project.

What has worked? What hasn't?

The PMD was able to fulfill all the evaluation criteria listed in the Applications and Implications assignment. It was able to hold an average person’s weight and move forward. It was also able to turn left and right according to the user’s control, while its speed was controlled electronically via the foot pedal. Therefore, the mechanical and electronic components of the project had worked as designed.

What had yet to work is a more effective braking system. The initial design was to use the high brake function of the MCU as the braking system. However, this was not effective as the high brake function simply cut off the power supply to the motors and did not retard the movement of the wheels.

What questions need to be resolved?

As the PMD had fulfilled the criteria set out and had a successful test run, there were no immediate questions that needed to be resolved.

Nonetheless, I do wish to further improve on the PMD in the next spiral. The first question to look into will be integrating an more effective braking system into the PMD. Specifically, I will like to investigate whether it is more suitable braking system: by mechanical means (e.g. a disc brake), or electronic means (e.g. putting the wheel in reverse to stop the wheel; the current MCU board does not have a reserve function).

What will happen when?

I intend to revisit this project and start working on the next spiral later part of this year, should my work schedule allows it.

What have you learned?

The first thing I learned from this experience is that it is important to spend time planning out the workflow in as much detail as possible. When I was working on the final project, I had in my mind a general plan of the things I needed to do. However, as the project progressed, I found myself looking into more and more details of the project, resulting in many aspects of the project taking more time and effort than I initially thought. Had I invested more time to plan out the workflow, I would have been able to foresee some of the details I overlooked and prepared accordingly, thus making the whole process smoother.

The second thing I learned is that it is very useful to visualize the work tasks using tools such as trello board, Gantt chart, or even a simple table. By laying out all the work tasks on paper or screen, I was able to have an overview of the progress of the project, to see what had been done and what were the remaining tasks. I could also then prioritize what tasks needed to be done first and what tasks could be done concurrently in parallel. One example was the use of the Trello board. Similar to what I did in Week 1, I created a Trello board for the final project. On this final project board, I grouped the tasks that needs to be done into three different groups - mechanical, electronics and programming. By moving the completed tasks out of the respective groups, and putting them in a 'Doing' or 'Done' group, I was able to visualize which task (or group of tasks) I need to prioritize to keep the project on track.

Finally, the third thing I learned is that it is important to discuss with others about the project, sharing as much information as possible. Discussions like this make it possible for others to give valuable inputs and advice. For example, it was through a discussion with the workshop instructor Gau Siong that I received the advice to work on the main piece of my project first. I took that advice and fabricated the main piece of my project, which was the chassis of the PMD. This allowed me to test out all the electronics and circuit effectively and kept the project progressing smoothing.