I'm Finished!
(Start to Finish: Jan. 4 - Mar. 15)
That's right, I put in the time and have finished building a working prototype as described in my Design Specification. I am proud to say that I have been able to implement everything I intended to and even have some plans to further develop upon next term. I realize that I have not kept up on posting my current status, but I was really pushing to complete this on the 10 week mark. I will continue to post on my development process following this post, so do stay tuned, the best is yet to come!!
For now I thought it would be fun to post some interesting facts that accompany this accomplishment.
TIME FACTS:
- Avg. Time in Lab per Week: 25 hours
- Avg. Total Time Spent per Week: 30 hours
- Longest Contiguous Time in Lab: 15 hours
- Shortest Time in Lab: About 5 minutes (I forgot something at home)
- Earliest Arrival Time to Lab: 6:15 AM
- Latest Departure Time from Lab: 2:00 AM
- Total Time Spent (Thus Far): 300 hours (I still have documentation and testing)
MONEY FACTS:
- Estimated Final Cost (Materials Only): $440
- Estimated Labor Cost, as Intern (@ $20 / hour): $6,000
- Estimated Labor Cost, as Entry Level Professional (@ $30 / hour): $9,000
MOST FRUSTRATING MOMENT:
- This is a tough one because anytime you hit a wall, it is frustrating. I think if I had to pick one, it would be in just the first week or two of starting in on the project. I had spent about an hour in lab wiring the first test circuit for the gunshot detection interface. When finished, I looked over the circuit and everything looked correct, so I turned on the power. When nothing showed on the output, I started checking the circuit again, the first check being my opAmp. I touched the opAmp to see if it was warm... it was HOT, about 150 F hot. Needless to say, this was not a pleasant experience. As it tuned out, I had reversed the power and ground on the opAmp rails, which pretty much killed that device. This little slip up set me back almost a week because I had only one opAmp on hand, and I had ordered more online just the day before. Aside from the time delay, I had also burnt my finger a little, and left a nice melted spot on my wiring board.
MOST SATISFYING MOMENT:
- One major issue I faced with this project was using a custom user interface that I developed in Photoshop. This was difficult because the size of the picture was quite large and my memory space is very limited. In order to use my custom picture, instead of drawing the UI, I had to manually load the picture into the flash memory. Once in flash, I could read the picture and load it to the screen. This entire process took me the better part of three days, working with a friend. When we finally were able to load a picture from flash memory, into the data memory and display it on the screen... put simply, we were ecstatic.
Needless to say, I am quite [excited, revealed, thankful, exhausted...] (you pick). I have really enjoyed this project, enough so, that I will keep working on it to make it better. I think the first thing I need to do is get my wife a big present for being so patient with all the late nights.
(Start to Finish: Jan. 4 - Mar. 15)
That's right, I put in the time and have finished building a working prototype as described in my Design Specification. I am proud to say that I have been able to implement everything I intended to and even have some plans to further develop upon next term. I realize that I have not kept up on posting my current status, but I was really pushing to complete this on the 10 week mark. I will continue to post on my development process following this post, so do stay tuned, the best is yet to come!!
For now I thought it would be fun to post some interesting facts that accompany this accomplishment.
TIME FACTS:
- Avg. Time in Lab per Week: 25 hours
- Avg. Total Time Spent per Week: 30 hours
- Longest Contiguous Time in Lab: 15 hours
- Shortest Time in Lab: About 5 minutes (I forgot something at home)
- Earliest Arrival Time to Lab: 6:15 AM
- Latest Departure Time from Lab: 2:00 AM
- Total Time Spent (Thus Far): 300 hours (I still have documentation and testing)
MONEY FACTS:
- Estimated Final Cost (Materials Only): $440
- Estimated Labor Cost, as Intern (@ $20 / hour): $6,000
- Estimated Labor Cost, as Entry Level Professional (@ $30 / hour): $9,000
MOST FRUSTRATING MOMENT:
- This is a tough one because anytime you hit a wall, it is frustrating. I think if I had to pick one, it would be in just the first week or two of starting in on the project. I had spent about an hour in lab wiring the first test circuit for the gunshot detection interface. When finished, I looked over the circuit and everything looked correct, so I turned on the power. When nothing showed on the output, I started checking the circuit again, the first check being my opAmp. I touched the opAmp to see if it was warm... it was HOT, about 150 F hot. Needless to say, this was not a pleasant experience. As it tuned out, I had reversed the power and ground on the opAmp rails, which pretty much killed that device. This little slip up set me back almost a week because I had only one opAmp on hand, and I had ordered more online just the day before. Aside from the time delay, I had also burnt my finger a little, and left a nice melted spot on my wiring board.
MOST SATISFYING MOMENT:
- One major issue I faced with this project was using a custom user interface that I developed in Photoshop. This was difficult because the size of the picture was quite large and my memory space is very limited. In order to use my custom picture, instead of drawing the UI, I had to manually load the picture into the flash memory. Once in flash, I could read the picture and load it to the screen. This entire process took me the better part of three days, working with a friend. When we finally were able to load a picture from flash memory, into the data memory and display it on the screen... put simply, we were ecstatic.
Needless to say, I am quite [excited, revealed, thankful, exhausted...] (you pick). I have really enjoyed this project, enough so, that I will keep working on it to make it better. I think the first thing I need to do is get my wife a big present for being so patient with all the late nights.
No comments:
Post a Comment