Specifications

This week, the main team assignment will be working out the draft specifications for your two concepts.

Set up specification documents

In your Team Google Drive, set up a folder for each concept. If your concepts are similar, you may end up with a single specifications document that covers both concepts. If the concepts are wildly different, you may need two different specifications documents.

In each folder, create a Google Doc for "Specifications". As we've said in class, the most important things are to 1) have a plan, and 2) write down your specifications. That's what we're doing here.

The format of your specifications document is up to you, but we strongly recommend following the sections laid out in Lecture and in the MILO project. The specifications for the HW, SW, server, and FW may take different forms (a list, table, wireframe, diagram, etc.). Do what makes sense!

For each concept, start filling in specifications, including ones you can set now and ones you don't know.

Questions that need answering

In a separate section or separate document, list questions that need answering for this concept. Each question should have a plan associated with it for answering that question.

Some questions need answering by the staff or partners. Questions to the staff can be asked on Piazza or at the Friday lab meetings.

Other questions may need market research, or modeling. This is part of what you'll be doing prior to the first presentations on March 2.

Other questions can be answered by fast prototyping. We have a bunch of parts that you can take advantage of if you want to test something out for the HW node. If there's something that you want that we don't have, ask and we can maybe order it.

Team roles

Most of the technical team roles will be decided for the first set of presentations. But there are other roles that need to be decided now: See the project page, and create a document for "Team Roles" and write down who will be the Note-taker, Orderer, and Mentor Liaison.

Functional system diagram

Create and update system diagrams for each concept. There should be a system diagram that encompases HW and server. There should be diagrams of the FW and SW. As you go along over the next few weeks, these diagrams will be updated, refined, and revised.