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?
The most significant risk for the success of the project currently is still the IMU. We were not able to test it significantly this past week, especially with its use inside a rolling ball. The biggest issue with our IMU is that it appears to be the only IMU with built in bluetooth on the market, a feature we really want. So if this device doesn’t meet our requirements, we may need to take a step back and have to change a few things.
One contingency plan, separate from what was mentioned last week is to purchase a separate IMU and bluetooth chip and connect them with a raspberry pie. This would be more bulky, and potentially mean us changing what size ball we use, but a viable possibility nonetheless.
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?
No major changes have been made to the existing system’s overall structure or idea. We have determined what ball we will be using, and have ordered it. It will be modular, with two separate halves screwing together. We also have changed our RFID chip to be a smaller sticker design, that will be compatible with our RIFD scanner.
Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.
No schedule updates at the moment.
As you’ve now established a set of sub-systems necessary to implement your project, what new tools have your team determined will be necessary for you to learn to be able to accomplish these tasks?
The past few week after recieving all of our orders for parts we finally had the opportunity to take a step forward and look at some of the smaller details of this project. For one we realized we needed to nail down a design for our ball, whether that be an actual golf ball, a hollow golf ball, or some seperate sphere design– and we managed to pick a design. Some other smaller details that we still need to iron out: Materials for the green– we know what we want the exterior to look like, but we need to design a good support structure to elevate the green so we can have our hardware situated underneath it. A final component to think about further is the hole. We have toyed with the idea of 3D printing a custom design, so that our pressure sensor will always be touched perfectly, or just buying an standard golf hole and modifying it from there. These are ideas that our team will be discussing and resolving this week.