T’was a wonderful recess week, all our members were enjoying the break, with some travelling to other provinces, but unfortunately we had to cut it short as we had to prepare for the presentation on the Friday of the recess week, which one of the heads of departments of the nearby branch will be attending as well.
The aim of the presentation was to give an update of the progress from each of the groups, and to get feedback on the direction of the projects, to ensure that it aligns with the company’s requirements.
There were many heated discussions that went on, with many ideas exchanged, and we came out of the presentation with new insights on where to take our projects during the closing weeks of ALP. Some of the new ideas which we generated since the last meeting turned out to be less ideal then we expected it to be, so it was good that we found this out before any further progress so that we could either revert back to our original design or generate a new one.
In addition, we could also see the progress of the year 2 ZJU students who are also under supervision by Cai Niao Mentors. Their progress was incredulous, with a fully working prototype of the individual components, and although their build was very bulky and makeshift, it was interesting to see how the design process differed between ZJU and SUTD.
The following week, my group went to a smaller collection point outside of the main city area to test run our prototype system. It proved to be more efficient then the original system that Cai Niao has in place, but this could be partly due to us ourselves being the test subjects, as we are more familiar with our system. Should our new system be implemented, there would be a need for new training for the staff in order to use the system, so we would have to factor that in when considering the cost of implementation.
Currently, we are working on creating a new PCB for the electronic tags which our system uses, but that has proven to be difficult to accomplish due to our limited knowledge of the subject. However our mentor has referred us to a manufacturer who may be able to assist us, and we are currently in discussion as to if it is possible to fit all the features we want within a given size limit. We hope all is good and that we can progress with the project smoothly.
Until next time!
Ian Lowe
