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1. Team Vision for Final Demo and Handoff
The team planned to run the complete system with oil, with the ideal case involving lighting the torch and observing the refilling mechanism. Additionally, we planned to research better options for the battery and capacitive sensor, as the existing components lack precision. We were able to obtain permission to light the torch during a test, in addition to creating a video demonstration. The team made some difficult findings and decided the best course of action was to document the mistakes made and explain improvements that could be made given more time to optimize the system. The project design package was transferred to our client to continue development of the system. This package included thing such as user guides and research on further possible developments along with any useful prototypes of the integrated system. End of semester deliverables such as the paper, poster, and lightning talk video were completed as per the MSD requirements and attached at the end of this wiki.
2. Final Test Result Summary
The last set of tests the team needed to complete was the full system test. This involved a series of preparations for each subsystem. The first road block was obtaining permission from RIT's environmental health and safety department (EHS) to work with citronella oil and possible burn it. After some time the approval was green-lit and the team began to assemble the system. Inside the Brinkman lab the torch, base and pump systems were assembled to begin the tests with filling a tank with oil and detecting the full state. If the team successfully reached this point then the torch could be lit under the welding vent. Unfortunately we ran into one big issue. The citronella oil acted more like an insulator than water did. This meant that the capacitive system was unable to detect the charge of the wire in the liquid at the full state. This means that the pump would eventually overfill the tank as the sensor always read the empty or low state. Several different tests were attempted to remedy this issue but we were unable to replicate the results of the tests with water.
This did not mean the team was unsuccessful in reaching their goals, though. Even with this issue several user guides were created to help the customer make the necessary changes to the system to fix the remaining issues. Attached below in section four are all five of these guides which include a large amount of detail on the subsystems and the challenges the team faced with them as well as the possible improvements and areas of further exploration for the advancement of the Bug Torch system. Overall the most successful system was the wireless connection and data transferring. We were fully capable of sending data from the torch to the base station over WiFi at the end of testing.
3. Risk and Problem Tracking for Final Demo
Risk Assessment
For Phase 8, the team has re-evaluated the risk assessment chart and made some changes to it. Overall the team has lowered the risk once again but we weren't able to hit close to 0 with the total importance as there were issues with mainly working with citronella oil and a delay in parts with the mechanical side. We have lowered 5 items of the risk assessment for this phase and below will be a list of the ones and why we made that specific change.
Risk 6 - Likelihood: 3 → 1. The reasoning for this was that the team has completed the semester for MSD II and COVID for us has not been an issue so since the class is over the likelihood that it will affect is us low.
Risk 7 - Likelihood: 3 → 1. The pump when we were testing did not cause loud or annoying sounds so we bumped that down from a 3 to a 1 for the likelihood of it causing an issue.
Risk 8 - Severity: 3 → 1. The reasoning for this was the same as Risk 6 where the class is close to being over and over the semester it has not been an issue for us so the severity of it is not an issue for us.
Risk 9 - Likelihood: 3 → 1. The team, not all being in person for us has not been an issue with the productivity and did not delay our work for this semester, so we decided to bump that down from a 3 to a 1.
Risk 10 - Likelihood: 9 → 1. The weather hazard for us hasn't been a major issue for this semester as we were testing, so we decided to drop that down from a 9 to a 1.
Risk 11 - Likelihood: 3 → 1. For the proof of concept for the torch system the team did enough research where the limited knowledge of the app or fluid did not affect us.
Risk 12 - Severity: 9 → 3. We dropped this from a 9 to a 3 as we feel that we did a pretty good job for keeping the overall price of what the team added low. The pricing is not set in stone as buying in bulk may reduce the price even more.
Risk 13 - Severity: 3 → 1. We decided to drop this risk down as the delay in parts did not hugely impact our deliverables for the end of MSD II. The likelihood was not dropped as we did see that there was a delay in parts that were out of our control such as the redesigned torch pole.
Risk 14 - Severity: 9 → 3. The solar system did not get burned up or damaged in any way during our testing, but did see another issue with the charging the battery and using it at the same so only dropped from a 9 to a 3.
Risk 18 - Likelihood: 3 → 1. We dropped this from a 3 to a 1 as we have been testing around with the Wi-Fi connection and haven't hit any major issues with that.
Risk 19 - Likelihood: 3 → 1. The reasoning for this was the same as Risk 18 since we did not occur into a statically damaged part over MSD II.
The changes to the risk assessment led the total importance value to be lowered by 50 from the previous phase. A chart with the importance vs the number of risks is shown at the bottom. It shows how the importance and the number of risks changed over each phase.
4. Final Project Documentation
Attached below are the teams end user guides as well as the necessary CAD Files and schematics to produce a full version of our prototype.
User Guides
Final Bill of Materials and Budget
CAD Files
Schematics
Possibly Requirements VS. Results...
Links to software.
5. Functional Demo Materials for Customer Handoff
6. Plans for "Next Phase"
If the team were given an extra three weeks the first thing we would do is redesign the torch body to meet the standards of the subsystems we used to solve the problems and meet customer requirements. Given full control over the torch tank we could include several improvements that would have brought the system closer to fully functioning. Also with more time the team could have added more detail to the user guides to make it easier for the client to make future improvements. Overall the team did very well with the project and even though the results were not exactly as expected we learned a lot about our respective fields and gained invaluable experience working with a team on a multidisciplinary design project. As far as a continuation of this project that is entirely up to our customer to decide. The team believes that with the knowledge gathered a continuation would provide significant advancement to the system.
Individual Phase Plan Sheets: