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Team Status Report for April 8th

What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of theproject? How are these risks being managed? What contingency plans are ready?

HW: I am a little scared that we might have to order more solenoids in case of burnout? We currently have 7 working solenoids and ordered 7 more because we had leftover solenoids in the toolbox but now they are gone. It’s not the worst risk since we can always order new ones. However, I am also a little worried about the power supply availability. If we can’t get the 30V/3A power supply, we can’t run this system.

SW: I am still worried about object detection, but like before, my backup is using the color detection that is already working.

MSW: I’m a little worried about melody generation. Generating random things isn’t that difficult, but I think that even generating mediocre melodies will be difficult. I don’t think that it will be possible to generate great melodies, at least consistently. Great melodies are difficult to write by hand, so creating an algorithm to do so would be an achievement by itself (and something I could probably sell for a large sum of money).

Were any changes made to the existing design of the system (requirements,block diagram, system spec, etc)? Why was this change necessary, what costsdoes the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward?

HW: nope

SW/Fabrication: I did redesign the mounting system because the 3mm did not hold the weight of the solenoids very well. The cost is going to be around $30, but hopefully this is the last redesign. SW – no.

MSW: Nothing major. Just small data structure changes to accommodate new data/changes.

Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.

HW: n/a

MSW: No change.

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

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Sun A’s Status Report for April 8th

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files orphotos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

I was able to finish the full-octave hardware component to be ready for the interim demo this week. I worked with Katie to build the mounting system. This week, I wanted to work on building the two-octave system or at least prepare the components for it; but, all of our new solenoids are gone because my team left the toolbox with all of the components in Tech Spark.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will betaken to catch up to the project schedule?

No — I am on schedule!

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

Hopefully, I can finish soldering and heat-shrink the components. So, I can start assembling everything onto the board.

Now that you are entering into the verification and validation phase of your project, provide a comprehensive update on what tests you have you run or are planning to run. In particular, how will you analyze the anticipated measured results to verify your contribution to the project meets the engineering design requirements or the use case requirements?

For my hw component, I use a very simple arduino code to test if all 7 solenoids can be turned on or not. From there, I tested a random pair of 7 solenoids and group of 4 solenoids at a time. As for meeting the engineering design requirements and the use case requirements, I try to make all of the solenoids solder to a longer wire and heat shrink as much as possible to make the circuit as compact as possible so it’s easy to install.

 

 

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Lance’s Status Report for April 1st

I didn’t do anything :'(

 

Mandatory April Fools’ jokes out of the way, here’s the real update:

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files orphotos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

Code has been rewritten and interfacing is set to be fully complete by morning. We’re running with a slightly simplified system for our demo, so I’m in the middle of making sure those aspects are perfect. I’m also writing a test program that showcases how our solenoid system can be used  if it were played perfectly. It’s just going to play a relatively simple melody with backing chords, but I think it’ll work as a good benchmark for timing and syncopation.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will betaken to catch up to the project schedule?

All good on my end, or rather, I count Sunday as the end of my week, so everything will be on track by tomorrow evening.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

After our demo, I’m going to complete melody and chord generation and get them at least somewhat functional and interesting. Integration should be completely finished, which means I can spend all day tweaking algorithms. Oh, boy!

I also want to see if there’s an easier way to detect the Arduino, because I’ve been having to manually find the COM port the entire semester. It’s not that big of a deal, but it does diminish the “plug and play” aspect of the system.

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Team’s Status Report for April 1st

What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of theproject? How are these risks being managed? What contingency plans are ready?

HW: I am a little worried that we are not able to solder the components to a protoboard. However, as long as we keep our wires organized, I think we can keep building our circuit on a breadboard. However, this is not a very significant risk in terms of running the system.

Music SW: Melody and chord generation have me somewhat worried. I don’t want to generate unusable garbage, but I don’t want to make everything predictable either. Our generative mode is one of the two main modes we want to implement, and if it’s not good, that’s going to be a problem.

Software (note that my stuff was overwritten earlier so I am resubmitting now): The object detection is the biggest risk still, as I have tried a lot of methods but nothing is working well still. The contingency plan is to use the color detection that is already working.

Were any changes made to the existing design of the system (requirements,block diagram, system spec, etc)? Why was this change necessary, what costsdoes the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward?

HW: we have decided not to solder.

Music SW: None since last week. I’ve been changing up struct internals to see what works best, but it doesn’t affect the overall system.

SW: Not since last week.

Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.

 

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

HW: N/A — will show our working circuit on Wednesday!

Music SW: Nothing here. I did sync the Arduino LED to an interesting rhythm but it wasn’t much to write home about.

SW/FAB (Katherine): added photo of the mounting system I designed in the slack.

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Katherine’s Status Report for April 1st

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

This week, I worked on creating the design to mount the solenoids above the piano, and worked more on object detection. I took lots of measurements of the piano and used online specs for the solenoids to figure out a design and created it in Fusion360. I will attach an image once the issue with uploading photos is fixed, but for now, I put the image in the slack. I exported DXF’s and will cut it all out and put it together on Monday with the acrylic that I picked up last Wednesday. I also spent more time trying to figure out how to get the symbol detection working, and had very limited success — one method that I tried was using template matching, but was scaling the image until it was greater than the screen, in order to account for different scales of the symbol – was taking too much time and causing a lag in the video. Another detection was only able to detect it about 5% of the time. Finally, I tried some shape detection and that was also having a very hard time figuring out where even the star was. I have been a bit frustrated with this, but I may try to make another attempt at creating a Haas Cascade after doing more reading.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?

I am on schedule, using the updated Gantt chart from last week.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

Putting together the mounting system and getting the symbol detection working so that I can shift from color detection to detecting symbols.

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Sun A’s Status Report for April 1st

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files orphotos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

I finished implementing a full octave actuator system. I tested them randomly and up to 4 solenoids can be powered at the same time.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will betaken to catch up to the project schedule?

No

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

Finish building the frame to hold all of the solenoids + start building two-octave system

I need to order more solenoids because I burned some of them 🙁