- 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 during this final week will be running into any unforeseen complications as we finish system integration. This is finals week, so as much as we would like to be able to devote every waking hour to finishing the project, we have other finals, job interviews, and projects to complete this week. Issues will be managed, thus, on a priority scale basis; for example, if Bluetooth between the mat and lock malfunctions, we should be able to quickly physically wire the two systems together.
- 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?
Come Monday, there may be a new change to the lock, as mentioned in Jada’s status report. This change, if successful, will allow for a smaller lock footprint, better audio quality, and slightly more amplification; this change will incur minimal costs.
As seen in Brooke’s report, the board design underwent many changes to fix some strength and quality issues. A new system to distribute weight was added, and the pads were replaced with much stronger wood.
The mat dance will now be encoded based on the times between steps instead of the times of steps to account for the fact that we don’t know exactly when the songs will play, because the Bluetooth connection timing is not exactly consistent. In addition, an HM-10 BLE 4.0 module will now be used for the lock Arduino Uno R3.
List all unit tests and overall system test carried out for experimentation of the system. List any findings and design changes made from your analysis of test results and other data obtained from the experimentation.
For the lock, the following items were tested: keypad functionality, servo functionality, SD card reader functionality along with song selection, Bluetooth module functionality, and speaker decibel levels. For the speaker, decibel readings were completed using an iPhone dB reader app in a moderately quiet room at 6″, 1′, 2′, and 3′ away from the uncovered speaker. Our goal was to have the speaker audible but no greater than 75 dB for safe hearing, and the current complete system achieves this specification. However, since the speaker will soon be covered, we are trying to amplify the speaker a little more to be at around 70 dB when covered.
For the dance mat, the strength and detection of steps were tested. Unfortunately, the original design of the pads was faulty in nicely distributing the weight and having strength for heavy weights, so we upgraded the final pads to newer and thicker plywood at around 12mm in thickness each. After this, things performed much better, with complete detection of the weights required and the strength to handle heavy weights and sudden strong forces of steps.
For the app, tests were conducted to measure how long it took for the app to connect to the mat. I ran each test 5 times for 6” distance, 1 foot distance, 2′ distance, 4′ distance (all on the floor), and standing height (around 4′ distance) above the mat microcontroller. I only tested without the antenna extension, because we could not access the extension at that time. The results from this test suggested that the antenna extension should be used, to ensure long distance connection is possible.