The Team
From left to right:
Matthew Hill is a PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering. He hikes and plays volleyball
Mike Wittenberg is a Master's student in Mechanical Engineering. He likes making things much more mechanically complicated than they should be.
Taylor Penn is a Master's student in Mechanical Engineering. ME218 floats his boat, but sinks his time.
Words of Wisdom
- Start early!!!
- Don't skimp on the mechanical design, and validate it early. Awesome sensors and code don't matter if you can't do anything or go anywhere.
- Mount circuit boards for easy access and make them readily removable for repair/modifications.
- Plan wiring ahead of time. Group wires going to the same place. Label wires and connectors. Design-in channels for wiring to run through.
- Lower your goals for function and raise them for reliability
- Black-box subsystems as much as possible, early-on.
- Waterproof carefully, if applicable. Hot glue and tupperware are very useful here.
- Integrate early on the PICs...integrating modules on th PIC is much more challenging than on the E128
- Keep subsystems as independent as possible. It lets you work independently, fix independently, and in the worst case, break things independently.
- Check your assumptions early on.
- Comment code well every time you write it..its easier to debug, and easier for teammates to understand.
- Design from the top down, then test from the bottom up.
- The simplest strategy, executed well, always gives the best results.
- Take adequate time to brainstorm your strategy and design ideas in the beginning. When the team comes up with something feasible that's based on solid engineering fundamentals, stick with it.
- Make sure to keep the lines of communication open between all teammates. Try to work together in the lab when you can. Working exclusively in 'different shifts' leads to inefficiencies in figuring out what happened while you were gone, and can cause friction between teammates.