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?

We are still running into some issues with linking the back and front end systems. Data is seemingly getting corrupted when we send over a wav file from the front end to the back end. Anna and Kelly have researched online for ways to address this, but all of the suggested solutions do not seem to be working. They have contacted their Web Applications Professor, but the solution that he proposed does not seem to be too promising. This all sounds pretty doomed and all, but they know what the cause of the corrupted data is: the wav file headers need to be reconstructed when sending the data over JS to python. However, although we know the cause, we don’t quite know what the fix is to this problem. 

Because of this, we still are somewhat uncertain about the format of the data that will be fed into the feedback algorithm. This proves to be the most significant risk thus far, as without this we will not be able to take in the user pitch and target pitch information correctly. Without this, we aren’t able to extensively test out the PDA to feedback algorithm pipeline, so progress on that part of the project has also slowed down a bit. 

In terms of risk management: In order for this aspect of the project to not completely block us on working on other aspects of the project, Anna created some mock data to test her graph visualization and for Anita to test her feedback algorithms (thanks Anna!). As stated in last week’s status report too, we are taking the integration with our PDA and frontend slowly with thorough testing before adding in a complicated scoring algorithm or more advanced graphics to display the pitches.

Also as stated last week, our contingency plan for us is having the pitch detection and scoring algorithms run on the full user audio after it has been recorded. But we are trying our best to avoid this route.

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 additional changes have been made to our design this week.

This is also the place to put some photos of your progress or to brag about a component you got working.

We finished our interim demo! Our professor and TA seemed happy with our progress, and we’re grateful to hear their thoughts and recommendations. 

Anita also did her first pulse check on the performance of her feedback algorithm and it rated Anna’s singing at a solid 70% 🙂