Amber Horvath Spring 7

So, we did expo! And with respect to Vee's email, I'll be answering the questions given in that email. So here we go!

If you were to redo the project from Fall term, what would you tell yourself?

I'd tell myself to work harder, earlier. While the timeline of our project was different from most teams and prevented us from starting implementation until later in the project life cycle, I believe there's more that could've been done to prevent the last-minute rushed feeling that I felt towards the end of the project. However, I also have enough experience working in large group projects to know that sometimes this is just the way it is. I'd also tell myself to work more on establishing good team working dynamics earlier on. Our team had some internal strife between members due to lack of clear communication of expectations and work balancing. If I could've said some magic words to Past-Amber to prevent this, I would have.

What's the biggest skill you've learned?

In my technical skill-set, I'd say this project got me even more comfortable with embedded C programming. My previous experience with C was mostly higher level with a bit of pointers and system calls thrown in there. However, programming directly onto an Atmega128 allowed me to become more comfortable with working very close to the hardware. In terms of team dynamic, I'd want to work on advocating for myself. I have a lot of stuff on my plate but sometimes I left myself get more stuff placed on me due to not saying "no". This is something I can work on both inside and outside of school.

What skills do you see yourself using in the future?

Since I plan on doing more user-facing software development in the future, I don't see myself using much of the technical skills I gained during this project. However, I do plan on using some of the team strategy skills we learned such as the retrospective table, effective inter-team communication, and the documentation creating skills we learned fall term.

What did you like about the project, and what did you not?

I liked the cross-disciplinary aspect of the project a lot. I had never gotten to work with electrical engineers and mechanical engineers before, so getting a peek into their work life was really cool. I also have always been fascinated by space so knowing that my software will be sent into low-Earth orbit is really exciting. What I didn't like about the project is that the software component was at the end of the project's life-cycle so a lot of winter term felt I felt under-utilized since we were still waiting on the EE's and ME's to finish up their work, along with having no motors to test on due to funding issues. Overall, the timeline of the project proved to be one of the most frustrating aspects of the work.

What did you learn from your teammates?

A lot! Especially from my ME and EE teammates since I knew almost nothing about either of those disciplines. But, specifically from Michael and Helena, I learned a lot about how to ask for help when I need it. Michael was awesome at always being there to lend me a hand if I was really running out of steam on the SD card implementation. Helena was great at sitting down and doing her work with little input or oversight from me or Michael. I could trust in her to do good work.

If you were the client for this project, would you be satisfied with the work done?

Absolutely! And I'm not just saying that for my grade. Nancy Squires has been to all of our meetings with our sponsors in Colorado and has been consistently impressed and pleased with the work we've done. If I was Nancy Squires, I'd be happy. We've accomplished a lot since September and it shows.

If your project were to be continued next year, what do you think needs to be working on?

If this project were to be continued, I believe we would want to expand the scope to allow for more fine grained movements of the arm and allow for dynamic loading of points for the arm to move to in space. Currently, we pre-process movements but in the future it would be cool to just say "hey arm, go to this point" while in flight and have it actually move there.