The assignment was filled with many challenging obstacles that were heightened by a time constraint. However, most importantly, this project helped me develop new strategy skills when tackling similar assignments.
March 13th, 2017
Unfortunately, on this day the road conditions left me unable to physically attend class. I emailed my group and we developed an alternate plan: I will work on the physical building of the box which housed all of our components; while the other group members begin to work on the speaker component.
I was able to finish the box during the night, while unfortunately, my group members were struggling with the speakers for the entirety of the class.
In hindsight, we should have moved on to the other components once we realized the speakers were proving to be more difficult than anticipated.
Nevertheless, our group had a productive first day!
March 20th, 2017
Our final day was here too quickly! With all of us together, we used the first 5 minutes of class going over out game plan and dividing the tasks to utilize the time efficiently.
Alyssa and I were responsible for wiring the lights and developing code that would yield the most interactive design. After much trial and error, 50 minutes into class, we pieced together a code that would alter the flashing light duration by how long the user pressed the button. For example, if they held the button for more than 2 seconds, the lights would change colors rapidly, as opposed to the slower more relaxed flash. And with some miracle, everything worked as planned!
Of course, this was too good to be true, this is where our main issues kicked in.
Sam and Sonia were still tirelessly working away with the speakers, trying to get everything to work. In the meantime, Alyssa and I began working on the motor. The motor was intended to be controlled by a button, unfortunately, time was ticking fast, and class was over soon. We successfully wired the motor together and wrote a suitable code. The code was very basic and just told the motor to move from right to left by 180 degrees. However, once we put the lights and motor on the same circuit, the lights stopped working. Dun dun dun.
We finally decided to ax the speakers and put all four brains together to try and figure out what was going on with the lights and motor. We were not able to come to a conclusion before class was over.
Final Thoughts
Looking back, my one major regret during this project was the time spent on the speaker. While we do still have our hard effort to show for it, our effort would have been better used towards the smaller components. In the original outline, the speaker was defined as an "extra" component, if we had time. Spending all of our time on this, left us with little room to complete the more simplistic aspects we should have very well perfected. For future assignments, I will stress the importance of time management by allocating sections based on their importance and current resources. Overall, I had a positive experience working with my group as we sorted our way through an important learning curve.
