Risks and Risk Management
This week we confirmed that the Arduino board can transmit voltage data to a local database through USB connection. However, we discovered that the measurements are not as accurate as we expected, especially for signals at higher frequencies. Additionally, Python may not be fast enough to read and write data of high frequency signals in real time. The inaccuracy and latency will cause the animations of the E and B fields to be inaccurate or delayed. To mitigate this risk, we will look for ways to improve the accuracy and latency. If this approach fails, we will resort to using other hardware.
Changes to the existing plan and team work assignments
Because the Faraday’s law experiment that relies on linear motion does not generate enough electromotive force, Shizhen will work on modifying the design, possibly incorporating circular motion instead in the next few days. Aaron struggled with some web implementation this week, but is overall still on track and will work to cover this implementation next week along with the current schedule for next week.
Otherwise there are no changes to our schedule as we are generally on track. We are also not making any changes to the Ampere’s law experiment as the mockup has confirmed its feasibility. We will proceed in the next week by ordering our circuit components and building the actual experiments afterwards, while testing the Arduino chip with our experiment mockups. As we wait for the circuit components to arrive, we will also work on improving the accuracy of the voltage sensing method, a new task that arose from the recently discovered design challenge.
Progress
As tested by Shizhen, the Arduino chip is able to send serial voltage data via a USB cable into a CSV file with Python. The database that Aaron is implementing for the web app functions on python as well, so integration seems easier. This averts the major risk that we mentioned in our previous report. We will now focus on delivering the CSV data to the web application.