What is the deadline? How much time do I have left?
I have two week’s time left and have since I’ll need to be traveling for some personal errands effective time left is further less. I plan to complete the mechanical assemly completely by first week and simulate it using ramps/arduino setup and on the second week I will focus on electronics design and fabrication and the presentation and video making in parallel.
Here’s my final project page
What task have to be completed What tasks remain?
I had worked on linear slide concept on my group machine design assignment I modified it and improved it further. So far only this part has been fabricated.
Stepper motor drivers with networking capability has to be designed, fabricated and programmed to check working.
Proximity sensor board with networking capability has to be designed, fabricated and programmed to check working.
The chasis has to be created with provisions for mounting motor and the gantry.
The programming has to be done so that the motor drivers receives command from the network and behaves accordingly. In case of the proximity sensor it should send the obstacle information.
How will I complete the remaining tasks in time?
Some components cant be developed without developing other component, and for some the development is not independent of each other and there is only limited time left. Depending on these factors I drew a timetable of which stuff need to be designed or fabricated and at what time with what priority.
The following are the rules I followed.
1. Begin with an assumption and not a perfectly formed idea, if the Assumption fails drop it, make inferences and continue with new plan.
2. Determine the minimal functional prototype of each component. For example, the chassis should be made such that it moves as straight as possible. Now, a perfect design, fabrication and assembly of those components would have taken a lot of time and research and development. A minimum functional prototype wouldnt bother much about designing for movement of wheels in a straight line but it would simply demonstrate motion.
3. Set Daily and hourly goals and try to get constant feedbacks and slowly build upon the inferences that were made in previous assumption on the activity and time it took.
What has worked? What hasnt?
So far the idea of doing the minimal working prototype has been a good success. Setting up hourly and daily goals and reviewing progress everyday has worked like a good guiding light.
I do find trouble in parallel working. I cant seem to master working on multiple things in parallel and in perfect coordination. Plans have never worked perfect but they kind of gave confidence and overview of where I stand and how to proceed.
Planning everything up to last minute didnt work good. I shouldnt plan to bank on last minute as a lot of things could go wrong that moment. Its not good to spread the work very thinly over time.
While mechanical prototyping my time estimates almost never met. Any new idea about mechanical prototype took my half a day to bring to life. And enormous iteration and time. Often when I get into the flow of developing something I stick to it till finish even though it causes damage to my plan overall. I will have to compensate and plan for this and review on hourly basis when dealing with new idea and prototyping. And it takes about 3 time more than what I imagine.
I am often too cautious when doing electronic design trying to encompass a lot of feature and perfect logic and most of the times my boards have come good without a hitch. But no matter how careful I am some things seem to slip my notice. Instead I should try to work quick fail quick and produce fast and iterate. The concept of fail fast and iterate are simple to understand but goes against my every nerve so I got to practice it often to get comfortable with it.
What questions still need to be resolved?
The following questions
How to make my project into a complete product
If the movement of gantry provide any steering effect on the system and how it can be reduced.
How to implement an error correction logic into the system.
Learnings
Making of the Video and presentation took longer time than I imagined. What I learned is that what I imagine and reality are two different dimensions.And I feel doing it in a group would have been much fun and productive too. Often we assume and imagine and when it is implemented in reality it is much different and often not to our expectation, we call this failure. But its more a chance of knowing our own thinking and correcting its course more than a failure.
While fabricating mechanical systems I realised that it is much easier to build things step by step and begin with minimum viable prototype first and gradually move on to more professional prototype. This also reduces the shocks and failures.
I was eally finding it a hassel to imagine a good chasis which encompases many many fatures and how exactly to place the wheel and ganry etc, It put unusual stress on my imagination and combined with stress of deadline is also very ineffective, and inefficient. Eventually I wouldnt have been able to create anything at all.
Noting things down and settinf my logic, assumptions and timeline on paper help enormously. When I go wrong I could go back to these documents and get clear idea of what wentwrong and it felt much easier on correcting them. If I work without a document or plan just based on imagination, I tend to get stressed at the first sign of failure and eventually abandon final goal and settle for something low. This is avoided nad managed well with a document, since it eliminates confusions and randm stressful imaginations.
Presentation
Presentation slide
Presentation video
