Future Risks

​        In general, we are very proud of our project. 👪
        However, this is not to say that our project will function in eternity like we would love to see (but can we live that long to see eternity?) If we had more time, we would try to make the system fully independent and automatic. We realized that if the power source of the system is cut off, we would have to use VNC to restart the system in Raspberry Pi. This is not ideal because we would have to constantly check the sculpture for its functionality, especially because it is at a location of high traffic, and people may trip over the wire.

We started the integration of mechanical and electrical components.
        To make sure the stepper motor has enough support to steadily drive the gear, we 3D-printed two boxes for our stepper motors. They are secured to the back of our board by screws.

Risks, Challenges, and Future Goals

        We were extremely pleased that our MVP worked in our live demo in class. However, our MVP is by no means as polished as we would like for a final installation. The interaction between gears are not extremely precise, causing extra friction and noise, affecting the precision of our sculpture. The stepper motors also heat up very quickly to a high temperature. 
        In general, we would like a much more polished model with more complex gear and pulley mechanisms. We are going to remake all of our gears and pulleys with much better material, and install them on a new board. We are going to integrate all electrical components including fixing the Arduino and Raspberry Pi to the backboard.

We decided on the data set to use.
        We wanted a data set that is, first of all, dynamic enough so that our sculpture would not remain stationary, and we also want to make sure that it is relevant to the campus. Since, based on our survey, people were interested in the amount of all campus emails they receive, we thought it would be interesting to track the two most widely used mailing lists, helpme and carpe. However, it's important to note that we still have the idea of versatility in the back of our mind. We can track different key words and/or mailing lists by creating different Gmail filters. We would also like to explore other kinds of data set if we have more time in the future.

We met with facilities to talk about the installation.
          We learned about the limitations of the possible locations for installation and other fire hazard regulations we had to follow, but the consensus of the meeting was an on campus installation is absolutely possible. At the end of the meeting, we had three possible locations that were all viable and  interesting. We could install either near the wooden waterfall, in the mailing room, or in the staircase next to the mailing room to the dining hall.

We worked on a rudimentary version of the mail tracking code.
         We were able to track emails in Python and control the motor with Arduino. However, we encountered troubles communicating between the two programs. We used DC motors first which proved to be not accurate enough and more complicated to control. We decided to use a stepper motor which provided us with much more control.
        On a side note, we also finished a code that tracked tweets from twitter but we soon found out that there is a limit to the amount of tweets you can track and this limit is not very high. We decided to leave that be for the moment and finish it when we had more time.

Risks, Challenges, and Future Goals

        Our biggest challenge at the moment is that we are still not close to finishing our MVP. We were caught up with deciding what sort of mechanisms we wanted to focus on. The decision on data set and location was also holding us back. For our next sprint, our priority is to have a working model (our MVP), which means that we would compromise the level of finish and complexity if necessary. We are also hoping to continue our conversation with facilities to know more about possible installation locations, since that would affect our structure.
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          We eventually decided on the first type, because the second type is too complicated to implement. We may not be able to have a highly polished product finished .

We built a simple model based on our idea.
          We wanted to see the motion of the hanging system, as well as trying out different motors. We built a simple wood structure and secured a hacked servo to the wood structure. For time's sake, we shaped metal wires into hoops to secure a small wooden block as the weight.

We visited a few locations on campus for installation.
          It's essential to determine the location where we would install our sculpture since it determines the way we would hang our structure. We considered the space in front of the library, the stairwell of the academic building, as well as the space next to the waiting line of the dining hall. We considered the possibility of hanging our structure from the ceiling above (more stable), or supporting from the side with clamps (easier to remove and attach).

Risks, Challenges, and Future Goals

          Our biggest challenge so far is to narrow down our ideas. We decided to prioritize longevity, simplicity, and impact. As a result, we had to make decisions on locations, mechanisms, and other electrical components. We will be meeting with facility to find a viable and impactful location to install Kinnect. We will also start narrowing down ideas in our next group meeting as opposed to brainstorming more ideas.