Project Risks and Mitigation
A key focus this week was reducing risks related to system stability during the upcoming demo. One major risk is inconsistent pipeline behavior across different inputs, such as skewed images, uneven lighting, or PDFs. This is being managed by refining preprocessing, selecting reliable demo inputs, and ensuring consistent outputs across repeated runs. Another risk is timing synchronization between playback, visualization, and hardware output. To address this, both playback and visualization continue to be driven from the same event stream, avoiding separate timing systems and reducing the chance of drift. Pipeline robustness is also a concern when handling edge cases like missing OMR outputs or malformed MusicXML. This was mitigated by improving error handling so the system clearly identifies which stage fails instead of failing silently. As hardware integration approaches, there is also a risk of mismatches between software-generated events and ESP32 expectations, which is being addressed by keeping the event format consistent and validating outputs before use.
On the hardware side, a key risk is unreliable input detection from the FSR strips, including missed key presses or false trigger signals. These issues may arise from electrical noise, signal interference, or variability in pressure sensing. This is being mitigated by improving signal stability through better wiring organization, consistent grounding, and isolating sensor lines where possible. In addition, software-level filtering and threshold calibration are being applied to distinguish intentional key presses from noise, ensuring more consistent and reliable input detection across all keys.
Design Changes
Design changes this week focused on improving stability and usability rather than adding new features. The preprocessing and scan pipeline were refined to handle a wider range of inputs more consistently, especially under varying lighting and image conditions. Error handling was improved across the pipeline to provide clearer feedback when failures occur. The playback and visualization components were also tested and slightly adjusted to ensure they remain synchronized and stable when running together. These changes improve overall system reliability without increasing complexity.
No changes made in the hardware components.
Schedule Update
The project remains on schedule and is ready for the upcoming demo. This week’s work focused on stabilization and integration, which aligns with the planned transition from development to demonstration and system validation.
Demonstrated Progress
The team successfully stabilized the full software pipeline for demo use. The system can now reliably process sheet music inputs, run the OMR pipeline, generate note events, and pass them into the playback and visualization system. Playback and visualization now operate together more consistently, allowing users to follow musical progress during playback. Improved error handling ensures that issues can be quickly identified and addressed during live demonstrations, resulting in a more reliable and demo-ready system.