Proj. Manag.

Project Management 

Guidelines for Weekly Progress Reports

• • Weekly Progress Reports (see sidebar), the Gantt chart, and this Project Management page should be printed out before meetings with the sponsor and instructor.

  • All team members should be able to explain all items on the progress report.

  • Place a "*" at the beginning of the title of the active week Progress Report (see * in sidebar).

Gantt Chart

Problem Definition Worksheet

Overview of Project Context

• • Genuflow’s objective is to conserve water by using cheap technology instead of the costly solutions that currently exist.  Conserving water is great because we would use the earth’s resources more efficiently and it would save people a lot of money.

Project Objectives

High Priority Objectives

• • Detect major leaks and breaks in irrigation system using low cost sensor

  • Detect a range of pipe problems (cracks to small leaks to breaks)

  • One suggestion was: determine the characteristic curve of the pipe and start looking at variances from something broken/leaking (Kirt’s current work)

Second Priority Objectives

• • Use of heuristics (AI) to evaluate breaks and leaks

  • Make it report back to the user wirelessly

Other Constraints and Issues

• • Use non-invasive technique

Wow Design Solution

Detection of all leaks before and after valve using AI

Super cheap/affordable, simple, manufacturable sensing mechanism able to execute machine learning and develop the heuristics to teach itself the characteristics of the system it’s deployed in.

A system that can adapt itself to different physical setup of pipes (instead of having a preset configuration.)

Risk Reduction Objectives

-come up with a testbed

-figure out the types of sensors we can play with and different scenarios for flow

-identify signals that pipe produces to identify characteristic changes

-analyze other factors that could affect reading (temp, surrounding medium, distance between sensor and user, source of flow abnormality)

-accuracy range (take into account all of the above) and noise associated with each sensor

-specs for tst flow rate, pressure, size of things

3 ideas:

Idea: Look at response of accelerometer with varying frequency ranges

Idea: Design recirculation system, with a pool and a pump and a raised table where testbed with pumps sit.

Idea: How to simulate leaks reliably and with repeatability

Intermediate Milestones

• • Construct testbed.

  • Perform tests to determine which sensor adequately detects breaks and leaks.

  • Determine characteristic signal curves of a variety of leak sizes for quick leak evaluation in future readings.

Individual Component Analysis Topics

-each of us can investigate a different type of sensor

And analyze other factors that could affect reading (temp, surrounding medium, distance between sensor and user, source of flow abnormality).

-Analyze accuracy range (take into account all of the above) and noise associated with each sensor.

Weekly Meeting Time with sponsor:

• • Sponsors think Thursday afternoons can work for next quarter