Week 9: Feedback for Milestone and Presentation Preparation

 Feedback for Individual Major Milestone

After presenting my major milestone to Steve there are a few feedback point that Steve pointed out for me that I could use to improve my own individual task and contribution to the group.

As I for my major milestone, the main component of this task is the prototype of the electronic storage. The main problem of this prototype is its material. Balsa wood at this stage is okay in terms of to present the structure and to present the idea of the prototype. However it will not serve to function of the prototype itself. As the box need to be slide smoothly on the rail, balsa wood create a lot of friction on the two surfaces therefore the box will not slide smoothly. The solution for this is to consider a new material for the prototype. The choice are available and seem to be affordable is the plastic or even thin metal. At this stage I am more interesting in plastic or acrylic sheet over metal as it might be costly to cut and weld them into such a complicated structure. Laser cut can be taken place for material such plastic and the price is depending on how hard layout is and the type and thickness of material.

Another thing is about Arduino and the circuit. At the moment the servo is only working that can be rotate in opposite direction. I just realized that this is actually a 180 degree not a full rotation servo therefore it will not serve the function that it needed to be. I will need to get a full rotation servo that can be purchased online or might be available from the other group member.

For the DC motor, as I stated in my major milestone post, possible method to control dc motors is the L293D H-bridge. This IC can be used to control the direction of the two DC motors that I want to use to pull the car in the prototype.

Things to be considered when working with DC motor is that the power supply to the motor. These two motors have operating volts of 1.5- 4.5V. The speed of the motor depending on the voltage apply to the motor. As arduino can not supply that much power into the motor I will need to get an external battery for it.

Presentation Preparation

Our group presentation of 'Conflict' will be on next Monday. So this week in our group discussion we divided up the section to each group member to be responsible for those contexts and speech.

I have been allocated to the two resolution techniques of 'Withdrawal' and 'Smoothing'

I have now planned and research onto those topic. The structure of the content would identify the meaning of those to terms. Explain what it means, what it is, when to use it and when is not good to use it. Reference and images are also required.