Following our site visit to CACI, the team has shifted focus away from our Preliminary Design Report as we look ahead towards Prototype Inspection Day! We spent this week conducting additional research based on the information and observations we gained while on site. With a better understanding of the pedestals and project requirements, we have begun planning a model test rig that will allow us to begin developing and evaluating our prototype in a controlled environment.

A major focus has been determining what data or useful information we can obtain from the motors which CACI has graciously given to us. Understanding how these motors can be incorporated into our testing will help us determine how closely our test setup can represent the actual pedestal system and what measurements will be available during prototype development.

This work is being guided by the upcoming Prototype Inspection Day, where we will need to present the progress of our prototype. As we look ahead at the project schedule, we are evaluating what can realistically be designed, built, and tested within the available timeframe. This planning will help us prioritize the most important features and establish a clear path toward having a functional prototype ready for inspection.

The day has come! We traveled to the CACI site in Sarasota to give our Preliminary Design Report presentation and get a closer look at the system we will be working with. The two-hour drive gave us some time to relax as a team, play games like Wordle, and prepare for the day ahead.

Once on site, our PDR presentation ended up feeling less like a formal presentation and more like a large conversation with several members of the CACI team. This gave us the opportunity to discuss our design ideas in greater detail, ask questions, and receive feedback that helped clarify the direction of the project.

We also spent a significant amount of time inspecting the pedestals and discussing possible methods for mounting our prototype. Being able to examine the hardware in person gave us a much better understanding of the physical constraints we will need to account for in our design. We were also given two working motors and one broken motor that we can use for development, testing, and comparison throughout the prototyping process.

Following these discussions, the project has shifted in a slightly different direction than we originally anticipated, but nothing too drastic. With a clearer understanding of the system, access to hardware for testing, and a more defined path forward, we are excited to get started on building and testing our prototype!

Our team recently completed our Preliminary Design Report presentation, where we presented our current design approach, project progress, and plans moving forward. Following the presentation, we reviewed the feedback and critiques we received and used them to refine the structure of our presentation, improve how we communicate our ideas, and build confidence in our delivery. This feedback will help prepare us for our final PDR presentation to CACI.

In addition, our team carefully reviewed the feedback provided on the Preliminary Design Report draft and spent significant time refining the document. We focused on improving its clarity, organization, technical content, and overall presentation in preparation for the final version that will be submitted to CACI at the time of our presentation.

Finally, after all of the work leading up to the PDR, we took some time for team bonding before our upcoming six-hour drive to the CACI site. The team spent a session together at a climbing gym, The Knot, where we were also joined by our coach, Dr. Patrick, as seen in the image above.

This week, the team’s work consisted mostly of planning our project further and completing IPPD paperwork. We started by refining our Product Architecture and beginning our Preliminary Design Review (PDR) presentation with advice from our coach Dr. Patrick. With her insight, we were able to make the Product Architecture and PDR easier to digest and more accurately convey the most important information.

The highlight of the week was meeting with our primary liaison engineer. He was able to give us the clarification we were waiting for: We will developing two versions of the project. One will be using all COTS hardware, and the second will be using all custom hardware. With two versions, we will be able to compare cost, compatibility, and accuracy with CACI.

Finally, we decided on a day to visit the CACI site to give our PDR presentation, inspect pedestals, get technical pedestal questions answered, and interview users of our product. We confirmed with our liaison and submitted the required IPPD paperwork to make it official. We are excited to visit on October 5th and can’t wait to share photos!

This week, our team focused on narrowing down and clarifying project design specifications. We started by creating a House of Quality table to correlate customer wants/needs to specifications and order our specifications by importance. This will keep us on track and remind us to aim our focus at the most major of goals.

At the same time, we developed more questions for our liaison, especially involving hardware. To aid in discussions, we built a preliminary parts list and system diagram to share our initial design plan and connected that to our budget.

It feels as if two questions arise every time one gets answered, but the team is facing it head on and can’t wait to get to work! Looking into next week, the team is beginning to plan a visit to the CACI site to clear up some unknowns and we may meet our primary liaison for the first time!

Finally, most of our team attended a Six Sigma Training on Saturday, where we earned our Six Sigma White Belt Certification and had a great time bonding and furthering our knowledge of process improvement.

Hey everyone! This is our team’s first post! Our team name is Pedestal Watch and our project is a pedestal monitoring system. Our team is comprised of six students of mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering disciplines. Today we had our first meeting with our liaison where we discussed our plans and what we’ve researched so far, as well as insights on more specific details of the project. We’re all super excited to work with our coach, Dr. Patrick, as well as the CACI team on this effort!