The deadline was clearly defined by the final presentation and the end of our documentation time. Because I want to leave time for some late adjustments I tried to stay in the schedule. I want to be ready for the final presentation on the 21th of June so that there will be some time left to fill all the documentation.
This is written at the time of the final project on 21.06.17. At this point my RemoteDogControl project was working already and I only have to work on the documentation of the project.
Because I have finished my project so far doesn't mean that the project is finished. There is a lot of work to do until I will spread the word and will publish my project in the wild. My project is working fine but I also see that there are still improvements that cam be done to this harness to make a better product out of it.
As I said I see no tasks for this finished project. Like every product there is still the possibility to do better. I will let the project as it is and think about redesign some parts of it to make it lighter stronger and more comfortable for the dog to wear. With this work done I can imagine to start all over and this time with a team of companions designing the project together with a budget to make a public product out of it.
The development of the iOS app was a success and a very well experience to do a lot more BLE wireless projects in the future. Because we wasn't sure that the BLE module and the iOS app work together it was nice to see that it is.
Also what worked was the feeder mechanism. At the moment it is a lille bis large but when I started the FabAcademy and present my project idea I really don't thing that I will be able to design an interchangeable magazine mechanism for the feeder. The technique zu use magnets and the molds to transport the rotation force to the magazine even against the flap opener worked very well and will also be reused in future projects.
It is to mention that not even the design of the harness was a success also the project idea figured out to be working. At the beginning there was only the idea to improve distance training. I was not even sure if the dog will be pleased to use the harness but she recognize the vibration on the body and is willing to do the wanted command after some training. The feeder was scary but after two rewards she immediately noticed that her favorite rewards comes out of this machine and even allowed the harness to wear and walk around with it.
What don't work as expected? Hard to say because often things worked more smooth as expected but what wonders me was how much work went into the CAD of the feeder mechanism. You can take a look to my Preparation of the mechanics. Here you can see all the iterations that the mechanic has be made during the final project development. Every time I designed a new feature in theory and in Fusion 360 it looked very good. All the problems first appeared when I had the real part in my hand, was able to turn or whatever the part was made for and see afterwards what is the problem with that part.
For that reason I really learn the benefit of 3D printer. It was so easy to create a real part and even test its mechanic that without 3D print I would not be able to produce the project in such short time.
The questions about the project idea will be solved. Is this a project that is worth to be work on in the future. The idea about this is nothing when at the end the dog don't wear the hardware or even worse would be afraid about it.
This answer can be answered with yes. The hardware I developed in this FabAcademy give me enough trust in this idea to improve the project to a state, where I really will use it in my daily training and to think about take this rough idea and develop something that maybe can rally help people with their dogs in daily life. So the work will continue.
Where to start here. In the FabAcademy I learned so much that you only have to take a look on my weekly assignments to see what it was in detail.
But I don't think that this is what you want to read here. But what is it in general what I leaned in the FabAcademy? I think the most important thing I learned in the weeks I've done all the work here is how I can accomplish new tasks in a short period of time. Every week we had to think about new techniques to accomplish an assignment I had to do in one week. There was sometimes even less time when I faces a illness and had to to two assignments in a week. So I learned to organize myself and enable me to do the work that has to be done in time.
Oh, one more think that was important for me to lern here. I really learned to document my stuff. Never before I had to document so much and in every aspect of my work like here in the FabAcademy. This was maybe the most important think I leaned here to write documentation that can be understand all over the world and can be rebuild by everyone who read it.