Notes on completing your final project
Important deadlines
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The deadline for the final project is 2359 Aug 21. This includes
- Project documentation on website
- Physical project
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Interviews will be conducted in the following week from 24-28th August.
A timetable will be released on the presentation dates.
How to complete your project
- Draw a calendar of days left in the project
- Write up list of things to be done, and the approximate times
- Allocate the necessary actions and time to the calendar.
- Try to stick to the schedule you have allocated. If an action does not
work or has problems, try not to spend too much time on it, but keep to the schedule, completing as much as you can, documenting your efforts.
- Here are some of the actions you need to make time for
- Lasercutting (depends on the lab and availability)
- 3D Printing (depends on the lab, availability and complexity of design)
- Electronics
- Prototype your circuit as soon as you can
- Test it
- Once working, convert it to a stripboard/veroboard
- See video on stripboard/veroboard
- Soldering work required
- Lab time at soldering station required
- keep your wires tidy
- Microcontroller
- Write the program, make necessary modifications
- Check that each small part works first
- Keep track of the code and changes
- Integration
- Check that the parts fit together
- It will be too late to do any design changes, use
- glue, hot glue to hold your parts
- drill, cut, sand, file and change using manual tools
- document what went right (and wrong)
- Documenation
- Document as you go, do not wait until you have completed a section.
- It’s alright to show that something did not work, you can use the information there to prevent future errors.
- Supplement your documentation with photographs, short video clips. Too many photographs spoil the work, it does not show how you did it and what problems you faced. You still need to WRITE an account of your work.
- Most students fail in documentation, which is one of the pillars of your project, spend equal time on it.
Hits, Tips, Tricks
Most of the projects propose fall into these categories, perhaps this websites can help in developing your project:
- Mood lamps using neopixels
- USB Volume control
Suggest that you use a DigiSpark ATTiny85, which we have in Fablab, the programming is similar to the Arduino Mega
- MP3 Player
- Useless Box
- Fusion 360
- Exporting your drawing to DXF - sometimes your DXF has splines (espeically when creating gears), that are not exported correctly to a DXF file. Use this plugin (thanks Keith!)
- Slicer - Converting a 3D object for Laser cutting
- Electronic Tips
- Prototyping