With a ton of great feedback from our PDR presentation last week, it’s time for our team to look ahead to Prototype Inspection Day (PID) in just a few weeks!

This week we entered the prototyping phase by detailing the components that will be included in our prototype. At PID we plan to display a simple version of our ball track, with all the curves and spirals, and electronics installed, too. We broke this plan into individual mechanisms and planned the construction for each of these mechanisms.

With that planning done, we also began purchasing components to use in our prototype. Some of the materials, like wood and metal needed for the machine structure, are already available at the IPPD lab—but some, like our Raspberry Pi and metal ball for the track, needed to be special ordered.

The team can’t wait to begin building next week as soon as our materials arrive!