Week 19 - Project Development
Assignment
complete your final project, tracking your progress
What tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?
I’ve crafted all the elements regarding the structure of the projects: wooden frame, 3d-printed joints and other minimal parts. I’ve also milled and soldered all the electronic boards and started to test them.
What I’ve left to do is to program the boards (but I’ve already defined a sufficiently accurate flowchart ready to be transposed into code) and to prepare the building blocks to used for playing with the game. The latter task will be done through printer, laser cutter and handicraft work.
If I’ve some spare time left, I’d like to add some fancy decorations and extend some functionalities (add an automated LED system, controls with potentiometers, etc.).
I’ve left the final assembly of the whole project to the very end, since I want to record it and use this process for the documentation.
What has worked? What hasn’t?
Up to now, I’ve had no major problem in designing and rendering many parts of the vision real (I give credit to this to an extensive reasoning and sketching before even stroking a key). I had to solve few math issue regarding the frame of the game, which might have cause me some serious headache since I haven’t dealt with trigonometry rules a single time in more than 10 years.
I’ve a minor problem installing the vibration motor, since I might have miscalculated few parameters in my CAD making the load jam on several surfaces , but nothing that couldn’t be solved with the help of a file and a saw.
Beyond that, the only serious issues I faced were more regarding the tools and machines which in synch to work as I wished.
I was used to mill PCB boards with the laser cutter, since it made me save time and drill bits, but for reasons yet to be understood the perfectly functioning settings used until few days ago didn’t render anymore acceptable result.
Hence, I resorted to use the small Roland CNC mill which under my work started to break bits serially. This was not only a waste of time, but also a waste of money and resource, but in spite of all the inexperience I might have in electronic production there was some serious issue goind on with the machine and my duty to discover if I wanted to proceed with my project. Along with our instructor we agreed that the problem might have been in the milling surface which after hundreds of hours of work was inevitabily and irreparably ruined, making the drill working on an irregular and error-prone surface. So I had to dismount the surface, remove its top layer, laser cut a new plexiglas layer and mill it so to have pcb boards lay flat over it.
It took three full days of error and trial before having a properly milled PCB board on my hands.
Last but not least, the wood our instructor bought for our final project was much more thick than we ever worked on before (to be fair, that was exactly the thickness I required) and laser-cutting it was more non-trivial than expected.
After many, many flawed or failed attempt, we were final able to get the wood cut without heavily scorching it.
I’m very, very, very happy to say that I finally had no problem in soldering perfectly functioning boards and the results are also visually decent.
What questions need to be resolved?
There are two main concerns I’m dealing with:
Although I based the electronic side of my project entirely on already tested and working designs, I still have to figure out if the whole system (it is made of several boards connected together) will works at unison. To properly check and prevent major bugs, I should have budgeted some time that probably I have no more.
The resolution of the load bar could be an isse I’ve not tested yet. This is not much a problem for the functioning of the system since I know I can make it work in a way or another (the whole mechanism is widely tested and used even in commercial appliances, and the web is full of tutorials and examples of use of load bar) but I’m more concerned about the cognitive aspect, meaning that it might be a bit too unnatural or far-fetched to use too different wheight as playing blocks.
What will happen when?
I’m running out of days for shipping the project, but luckily I’ve also very clear on my mind what to do and when to do it. Less than unexpected failures I think I’m going to plan my next days as follows:
Monday 11th - Software implementation and testing
Tuesday 12th - Blocks design, realization and calibration
Wednesday 13th - Fine-tuning, finishing and decorations
Tuesday 14th - Final check, playtest and documentation
Friday 15th - Presentation
What have you learned?
Two are the things that I learned the most.
First, that you can be best in the world at a single, few or even many skills or techniques, but what makes a project go forward is the acccurate, intelligent integration of them. This also means that you don’t have to be a guru in anything before applying your knowledge to a real life project: an easy, simple, trivial work can make a great meaning and professionality if put into a well-defined structure.
The second thing I’ve learned is that anything is possible, according to its required budget of time, resources and experience. I don’t feel like saying that my project is hard to conceive or realize, and yet before starting my Fab Academy journey I could have not designed even the most simple part of it. Right now, I’m feeling the opposite: I know exactly what to do and how to do it, but I’ve to deal with many more limitations such as my schedules and my resources (both material and physical).
All the time in the world but no skills will help you make nothing but expectations, while too much experience and no time will only result in wasted potential. A clear, realistic, feasible project plan in the middle way can miraculously solve both ends.