Seconds From Disaster

Greatest achievement

Creating a beautiful, fully functional pirate ship, complete with crew, just in time for the grading session!

What worked

We had a gorgeous ship. We did a great job paying attention to all the details!
The fiberglass boat was very robust
Our electronics were pretty solid
We all worked on at least a bit of every element of the project: mechanical, electrical, and software. We definately learned a lot in the process
Maintain a diligent GoogleDoc with daily updates on ToDo's (and a table of contents at the top for organization). Our blog was a great form of communication for us.

What we would like to improve

We were not as efficient as we could have been. Rather than building off of each other, we often redid work that other teammates had already done.

Gems of wisdom

Have fun!
Keep simplifying your design!
Communicate with your team.
Make your project look good and robust.
Design for adaptability and flexibility. Changes will need to occur, so allow for flexibility in your mechanical, software, and electrical from the very start.
Try to accomplish at least one task every day.
There usually isn’t time for prototyping/many reiterations, so when building boards or mechanical systems take the time to do it right (i.e. solder the board!), and be done with it.
Try think of creative debugging indicators (LEDs work great as well as our LCD screen) that allow you to debug electronics outside of software.


	GEMS OF WISDOM Greatest achievement Creating a beautiful, fully functional pirate ship, complete with crew, just in time for the grading session! What worked We had a gorgeous ship. We did a great job paying attention to all the details! The fiberglass boat was very robust Our electronics were pretty solid We all worked on at least a bit of every element of the project: mechanical, electrical, and software. We definately learned a lot in the process Maintain a diligent GoogleDoc with daily updates on ToDo's (and a table of contents at the top for organization). Our blog was a great form of communication for us. What we would like to improve We were not as efficient as we could have been. Rather than building off of each other, we often redid work that other teammates had already done. Gems of wisdom Have fun! Keep simplifying your design! Communicate with your team. Make your project look good and robust. Design for adaptability and flexibility. Changes will need to occur, so allow for flexibility in your mechanical, software, and electrical from the very start. Try to accomplish at least one task every day. There usually isn’t time for prototyping/many reiterations, so when building boards or mechanical systems take the time to do it right (i.e. solder the board!), and be done with it. Try think of creative debugging indicators (LEDs work great as well as our LCD screen) that allow you to debug electronics outside of software.