This week, I spent a significant amount of my time creating, editing, and preparing our proposal presentation. I presented on Monday and look forward to reviewing the feedback I will receive in the next few days. I felt like I did a decent job, but I know that with time and experience, the nerves will go away, and I will be able to present much more fluidly. My group and I also appreciated the questions from other groups and have taken them into consideration.
Aside from preparing for the presentation, I have also been looking into possible solenoids that I can use for the actuator part of our accompanyBot. We have selected two 25 N solenoids to test and one 5 N solenoid. After looking through previous projects with similar ambitions to ours, we have determined that getting solenoids with a higher force output, like 25 N, would likely be better when pressing down the piano key. Unfortunately, they are more expensive, so we would also like to order a 5 N solenoid to verify that they do not work as effectively before buying all 25 N solenoids.
Furthermore, I have done some preliminary research into how we will manage the power required for our system and what else will likely be necessary for the circuitry component of the project.
To conclude, I am currently on track with the Gantt chart presented in our project proposal. I hope to be more productive in the coming weeks as I aim to talk with our TA and order some parts at the start of next week. Hopefully, our parts ship fast, and I can begin testing and determining which solenoid we should use; however, if that is not the case, I plan on helping Nora develop and implement a plan for the microcontroller component of the project as we wait for parts.