I found the first week to be a little fun and exciting trying to come up with ideas and meeting with my team members. In order to work as a team during the first week of this Integrated Engineering Team Project plan, we have been spending time together. Everyone  was new in an unfamiliar setting, thus this session was the most crucial of all since it allowed us to get to know one another. We discussed how things should go forward, traded ideas, and spoke about the orientation that was provided. It was also this week that we scheduled a meeting with our advisor and first met with him. In order to work as a team, this week's focus was mostly on knowing one another.

I became familiar with the course's goals and fundamental guidelines during the second week. I read the materials and watched the lectures that were uploaded to the e-learning website. I learned about the UN's SDGs and their objectives. I conducted research on potential project concepts that could address at least one UN SDG. We met with our advisor, talked about our objectives, and he gave an explanation of how to choose ideas by taking into account local issues that are within the budget and make effective use of our resources. The next week's assignment was to submit project ideas.

This week was special, as I was also chosen as a Team leader for the Project. A few SDG related ideas have been previously discussed, therefore this week we put them on a proper path for developing recommendations for each idea that was suggested. Each team member was able to articulate their thoughts through extremely straightforward suggestions from our advisor as well. We were able to select three recommendations from among all the ideas that were put out, and we are going to use them. So, in order to determine which of the three concepts was the greatest, we all started to learn more about them and agreed to go with one. Additionally, I was creating an e-Portfolio to showcase our project reflection and develop our resumes at the same time.

And after deciding what we were going to do in this project we then immediately dived into building the final proposal which is going to be finalized on the coming week. Side by side on this time we as usually updated our E-portfolios in accordance to the progress of the project. Writing the proposal was a little time consuming and challenging as it needs to include ever details from the background of the project to project flow and task allocation while including objectives, problem statement, theory, design methodology and more.  Additionally this week  I was also researching on ways to automate the project using software technology such as controlling the smart garden as well as checking out the power level of our battery.  

Delivering and completing  the project proposal is necessary before moving on to the next stage of prototype development. As a team leader I shared the tasks of preparing the prototype across the team so that some members work on the design while others write the document and we managed successfully complete the proposal on time. The proposal is organized such that everything we require for the project is subjected and described with the utmost care and attention to detail. Along side the proposal preparation I was also designing the mobile app design on figma for the project. The mobile app aims to inform the owner about the energy level, water level, garden status and other information easily. Along side providing information we also plan to add features to control the garden sprinklers and energy generation pump from the mobile application easily. Here is the initial design on figma.

After preparing an inde debth proposal, the next step is to gather and purchase materials needed for the project. As a result I have prepared a Bill of material and Procurement plan docummne to be approved by advisor in order to collect the project financial funding. The process of preparing this document has gave me the opportunity to research and experience the professional steps and formats to be followed specially by government organization to formally document financial transaction and decisions. While waiting for the financial process completed, the team was collecting materials needed for the project that are not purchased.

After the financial process was completed, we preceeded to purchase the material needed for the project. Following the bill of materials and procurement plan, we started buying the materials like motor, battery, wifi modul and relays needed for the electronic part of the project as well as papers, ply wood, markers and boards needed for the construction part of the project. I also started programming the mobile application development using flutter, an open-source UI software development kit created by Google. It is used to develop cross platform applications from a single codebase for any web browser, Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows.

As we start the protoype fabrication the team was building on the tasks separately. The civil construction team continued with building the house based on the initial design blueprint. The electrical team also started testing and building the energy generating circuit as well as the battery storage. I was also helping the electrical team with writing the arduino code for the wifi module ESP8266 along side continuing with the mobile application.

Throughout this process I have learned that collaboration and communication are key in ensuring that all components of the prototype come together smoothly. It's important to stay organized and keep track of progress to ensure that everything is completed on time. I also realized the importance of flexibility and adaptability, as we encountered unexpected challenges that required us to adjust our approach. Overall, this experience has been valuable in teaching me the importance of teamwork and problem-solving in a real-world engineering project.

During this week, we focused on improving the design and adding additional features to the prototype. We spent time brainstorming different ways we could make the prototype more user-friendly and efficient. During this week we faced some issues with the energy generation as the motor generator we purchased was inefficient for the project purposes. Therefore, we had to look for an alternative motor type to fit our project specification. 

Along side the project this week was special for me as I was participating in the National Huawei ICT competition and passed to the regional final competitions to be held in Tunisia to compete representing Ethiopia.

As we continued to work on improving the design and functionality of the prototype, we tested the prototype extensively and made any necessary adjustments to ensure that it was working correctly. One of the adjustments was to use custom made 3D printed Gear for the power generator to enhance the energy generation.

During this week I have completed the mobile application code development as well as the arduino code for the integration with the relay module to control the pumps virtually from the mobile application and check the status of power, moisture and water level of the project. We also spent time preparing for our final presentation, which was coming up soon.

During the last week, we focused on preparing for the presentation to our evaluator and submitting the project and itsfinal report. We first rehearsed our presentation to ensure that we were able to effectively communicate our project's goals, features, and benefits to the evaluators. We also made sure to prepare a well-written and thorough project report that outlined the problem our project was addressing, the proposed solution, the technology used, and the potential impact of the project. I additionally prepared the project poster used to show and market the project.