What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project? How are these risks being managed? What contingency plans are ready?
Keeping an organized wiring system is one of the most significant risks going forward. For our demo, we have 22 gauge wires from the Arduino to each motor. This takes up a lot of space and for the 6 motor systems we have, the cable management is getting pretty messy. We currently have 5 colored wires for the 6 systems, but when we reach 18 motor systems we’re going to need a better system. For the demo, we’ve made a wiring diagram to reference that can be found here. Moving forward, to manage these risks for the final, we plan on using ribbon cables and crimp pin connections. With ribbon cables, we can have one bus of cables which are flat and organized. When the cable reaches a motor system, it will branch out to connect to the system.
Were any changes made to the existing design of the system (requirements, block diagram, system spec, etc)? Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward?
The orientation of the motors within their casing needs to be turned 90 degrees to the left (clockwise) in order to minimize the risk of breakage.
For the interim demo, we are changing how we implement the motor holders, power system for the lights, and motor system driving device. For the motor holdings, we are using cardboard instead of the rubber we plan to use for the final. This is to save money in our prototype system. We are using a 6V battery supply made up of 4 AA batteries instead of the 9V battery with a buck converter we plan to use in the final. This is because we are currently waiting for the buck converter to come in. Lastly, we are using the Arduino to power the motor systems instead of the servo driver device. This is for several reasons. The servo driver device does not provide enough power to drive the motor systems until we receive our PCB boards. We want to deliver a product that can provide the sensations we want for the final project so we are instead wiring the motor systems directly to the Arduino board. The board is limited to 6 PWM outputs so this solution will not work for the final.
Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.
Individual tasks of each member will be updated to be taking place simultaneously with our integration of the software and hardware components.
With regards to the software side of things, we are still looking to track the low health, small hit and large hit game events. Moreover, we look to incorporate our PCB to our original design the moment it arrives.
This is also the place to put some photos of your progress or to brag about a component you got working.
Cascading lights
Progress with wiring up our motor systems