To Do

  • New sensor received on 11/14.  Testing will be conducted the following weekend.
  • Build a container for the Arduino, PCB, and LCD display.
  • Continue programming to include sensor reset and calibration when testing is concluded.

 

Completed

  • Plumbing connections have been found that are food safe, RoHS compliant, and the correct dimensions of the given tubes and flow sensor connection.
  • Testing the sensor at various rates, pressures, and densities of carbonated sugar water will be conducted for the purposes of adjusting Arduino programming code.
  • The code will also be modified to store information over the lifetime of the sensor and of the keg that liquid will be flowing from.
  • More testing of the capacitive sensor will be carried out to find the precision of the sensor using MATLAB and an oscilloscope. Found to be waste of time, too much time needed to be dedicated to testing the sensor that would be used.

 

Hindsight

  • The materials for running tests should have been provided at the beginning of the first semester.  Often times the team did not have enough information to be able to ask the right questions.  By providing as much information and the materials needed to work, the team may have been able to better see the path moving forward.  Instead the kegs, CO2, tap, lines, freezer, etc. were not available until the second semester.  And some of these items were not available until several weeks into the second semester.
  • A lot of time was spent on testing tap water.  This was under directions of the adviser.  As covered earlier, the team often didn't have enough information to be able to ask enough questions.  So the team moved forward following the adviser's directions.  The team should have been testing tap water while testing carbonated sugar water at the same time.  This would have provided more valuable information in a more timely manner.
  • The adviser spoke with authority and often times on behalf of the sponsor.  Under these conditions the team was correct to follow the adviser.  However, the adviser was moving forward on as much and sometimes less knowledge than what the members of the team had.  The friendship of the sponsor and adviser does not make for an ideal environment for the team to work.  At one point the sponsor had gotten upset due to missed communication.  This would have been more easily avoided had the adviser not spoken during weekly team meetings on behalf of the sponsor due to their friendship.  This may have led to the team lacking equipment for too long as the adviser continually said "I'll talk to Chris about getting you the equipment" while the team was put on hold waiting for the equipment.
  • The sponsor may not have been ready to take on this project as he discussed in an email his inability to separate his personal time from his professional time.  This can be said because of his claim that he lost his company money while working on this project, which is a personal project of his.
  • The Arduino Due was not the ideal microcontroller unit to use for this project.  If the team had more knowledge of the problems that all Due's have, they would have been more persistent in asking for a better unit.  This is more evident upon finding out at the prototype rollout that the Due was just "sitting on a shelf somehwere".