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Team Status Report 3/8

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 at our current stage of the project is not being able to get the parts we need in time to build our project according to schedule. In order to mitigate this risk, we have allocated buffer time in our schedule and will use available components for prototyping while waiting for the specific parts we need.

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?

We haven’t made any major changes to the design on the system since our last status report.

Additional Questions

Part A (written by Aleks): JustPerform is designed with consideration for global factors as it is meant to be usable by those who are less technologically savvy. Our interface is simple to use and connects directly to the user’s Spotify library to eliminate the task of uploading files which some users may not understand how to do.

Part B (written by Hugo):  JustPerform is designed with consideration for cultural factors as we take the possibility of the user having a different accent into account in our vocal scoring algorithm. By scoring based on the similarity of the final audio signal of the user vocals + background music and the original track, we avoid the language/accent bias that may come with scoring based on lyrical accuracy.

Part C (written by Kiera): JustPerform is designed with consideration for environmental factors since we aim to minimize our power consumption as much as possible. One design choice we made in line with this goal is using a hardware filter to separate the lyrics from the backing track of the user’s songs rather than running a software filtering algorithm.

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Hugo’s Status Report 3/8

This week I was unable to achieve my primary goal of prototyping the hardware filter for our project. The design report took precedence over everything else, and although we did well on our design presentation, I found there was a significant amount of details missing for my implementation. First, I had written out a base schematic but I needed to make choices about not only the specific components but also how it will be powered. I also selected the specific cables we need to use in order to split the stereo left and right channels. I also was previously unaware of powered vs passive speakers and found that the original speaker was a passive one. This means we additionally had to add in an amplifier to boost the signal to our desired levels. I helped the team flesh out our physical requirements for some of the other systems as well. Overall I have fallen behind slightly and need to do some serious prototyping and catching up when we return.

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Kiera’s Status Report 3/8

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week.

This week, my main focus was on completing the design report. The main sections that I worked on were our design tradeoffs, testing and verification metrics, and risk mitigation while filling in information relevant to our microphone system throughout the report.

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

My progress is behind schedule since I spent the week working on the report and do not have any deliverables. To catch up I will spend more time this coming week working on building the microphone.

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

By next week I hope to have a somewhat functional microphone prototype that is capable of capturing the user’s audio and motion data.

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Aleks Status Report 3/8

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week.
This week I spent all of my time working on the design report. I worked on our introduction and project management sections, updated our block diagram to be more readable, set up templates for some the sections, and filled in the areas relevant to my expertise in our software system, web application, and lyric retrieval mechanisms across the paper.
Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?
My progress is slightly behind, as I forecasted would occur last week. I did not have time to work on any deliverables for this week due to spending all of my time on the design report. I will double down to make up the progress when we’re back, which should be very doable given fewer miscellaneous course deadlines demanding my attention.
What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?
I will implement our full integration with Spotify API and do some basic renders of our front end. Given time, I will start work on our lyric scraper.

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Hugo Status Report 2/22

This week I continued working on the specifics of the design for the filter system. I have started to look into the benefits of using a PCB for our circuit instead of the original / current plan which was to simply breadboard it. I am in the process of finalizing the actual design as I completed my matlab tests and am mostly satisfied with the current output of the vocal removal. Before I go into fine tuning, I first want to try breadboarding the circuit and seeing how well the filter works in real time analog. This is going to be my primary work for next week and my priority is finding out whether or not the system will perform with the same level of quality in our actual system. This week I also took time to analyze our new scoring method for the singing. Having pivoted to our new method of subtracting the original from the final signal and analyzing the remainder, I wrote up some additional matlab tests to see what this result would look like. These tests have been promising, but again, I need to test the results with signals in real time. Overall, next week will be centered around developing the first real circuit prototypes for the filter.

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Team Status Report 2/22

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?

One of our risks right now is making sure that we will be ready for relevant builds in a reasonable timeframe. As Professor Sullivan mentioned during our meetings, it is important to order parts with significant time due to potential shipping delays. It will be important to place orders for our project early this week, presumably after having our meeting with our staff on Monday to confirm our feedback from the presentation, so that we can have our relevant hardware accessible. After the parts are ordered, we should make sure to actively track parts, including over spring break, to allow for pivoting if a part is heavily delayed.

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?

All of our existing design goals are aligned with what we presented at the design presentation. We did more heavily spec out our existing design decisions for the design presentation, including selecting our audio processing style, specific hardware decisions (e.g. using the Arduino Nano BLE), and lyric sourcing mechanisms from our potential options. We also prepared a more in depth GANTT chart than we had for the first presentation. However, we are prepared to use for potential feedback from our design presentation to adjust accordingly next week.

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Aleks Status Report 2/22

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week.
This week I spent time significant time on Sunday working on fine-tuning our design presentation slides. I also worked through one of the provided Spotify API tutorials, which should be useful in starting our development with Spotify. I did a bit of research into website scrapers as well, as I will be constructing one for our lyric retriever and I don’t have historical experience. Finally, I spent some time working on getting our design report started and understanding the relevant information that we will need to collect.
Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?
My progress is on schedule.
What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?
Next week will probably be mostly spent working collaboratively with my team continuing to work on our design report. With any additional time, I hope to do expand my work with Spotify API to provide relevant proof of concept for integration with Hugo’s audio processing.

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Kiera’s Status Report for 2/22

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week.

This week I spent a significant amount of time preparing and rehearsing to give our design presentation. Additionally, I planned out more of the specifics for our microphone and accelerometer system. After doing research on different microcontrollers that we could potentially use I came to the conclusion that the Arduino Nano BLE would be the best fit for our design requirements. The built in accelerometer and bluetooth capability allow for our design to be more compact and mobile. 

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

My progress is on schedule. 

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

By next week I hope to have placed orders for the required parts and to have a fully fleshed out plan for the casing of the microphone.