Our team is made up of seven members, six of which are from Steven's Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) and one from the School of Systems & Enterprises (SSE). They are as follows:

1. Calvin Zheng -- Backend software library that allows the modules to work together and display as intended

2. Michael Compagnino -- Compiling required hardware components and building the physical device

3. Jonathan Kubas -- Compiling required hardware components and building the physical device

4. Jagnoor Gandhok -- Ensuring modules have a security check for sustained network communications. Assisting in software setup and hardware installation, if possible.

5. Ninghui Fang -- Setting up the frontend software (user interface) that allows users to interact with the modules

6. Jordan Fernandes --Backend software library that allows the modules to work together and display as intended

7. Bailey McNamara -- Setting up the frontend software (user interface) that allows users to interact with the modules

Overall, this semester went well. We made solid progress on the assignments in both this class and IDE-401. Additionally, we also had the time to take some extra initiative in prototyping with clear LCD screens. 

What Went Well

One of the highlights of this semester was our team's recognition of a need to pivot from our original concept. Originally, we intended to create transparent light modules that could act as a low-resolution display on large buildings. However, early in the project, we were able to recognize that this was infeasible due to high expenses. Thus, we were able to pivot into a similar concept involving transparent LCD modules. These modules would be much easier to make with greater potential use, especially for our new target markets of in-store advertisements and push alerts. 

On top of our pivot, we were also able to keep good team communication via a shared Discord server. We used the channel to coordinate our attendance, allow remote access to our meetings, and share knowledge when necessary. As our project continues, we want to keep using this Discord for team communications. 

What Could Improve, and How

One place where we struggled this semester was in having consistently productive meetings. Although Discord was very helpful in keeping high participation, some meetings remained less productive than others. This is for a couple of reasons. First, as college students, some weeks are simply busier than others, so this is somewhat understandable. Regardless, one thing that could've helped us would've been to have more structured meetings. As part of IDE-401 this semester, we had to keep and submit meeting documentation, which Calvin did an exceptional job with. Alongside keeping post-meeting notes, having pre-meeting notes may be helpful. It would let us get a more consistent grip on what needs to be done and discussed each day. Moreover, having pre-meeting plans could open the gate for us to plan our sessions with our long-term goals in mind, essentially creating a helpful "timeline" of where our project should be at what times. 

Another place where we can improve is in what areas we're focusing our work on and what we are investigating. This semester, we made exceptional progress in hardware prototyping, especially for our LCD screens themselves. However, we have made comparatively little progress in the areas of software or market research. IDE-401 already put us on the task of doing some initial market work, but we want those tasks to simply be our baseline. In other words, in order to be even more successful, we need to perform deeper investigations on the market and the industry that we're trying to enter. To achieve this, we expect that we're going to need to do some more "hard research" by investigating library resources. Then, we could use this knowledge to guide us on what we may need to change on our project and where we should place our focus. For this market research, Discord would be especially helpful as it would allow us to share the resources we find with the entire team. Alternatively, we could maintain a sort of "library document" of the links and articles we've found if the team is inclined to maintain it. 

A more critical issue we should address is our software progress: right now, not very much has been made. This is a problem because we expect that our software will be a core innovation of our project. In fact, on the hardware end, technology for clear LCD screens has already largely been created, patented, and used. Our main "defining feature", therefore, will be our software control system, which will allow stores to push content to our modules, switch between the store and emergency channels when necessary, and coordinate multiple modules into a larger display. In short, having well-made, versatile software will be critical to mark Clearvoyance as truly "new progress" on the fronts we're trying to pursue. Similar to our library research, Discord could be helpful to coordinate our progress and meetings. More importantly, we should create a team project (most likely a GitHub) as a high-priority item, and begin software development as soon as we can. Of course, coordinating with the hardware team will be critical on the software side, which is another area where Discord can shine. 

Conclusion

For this semester, we overall hit the marks that we're expected to have achieved at this point and made some additional progress on the hardware side. However, for our project to truly shift above the baseline and reach greater success, there are some changes that we'll need to make. We should perform more coordinated efforts on the hardware and software side, and we can smooth out some of our team processes a bit via additional meeting planning and use of the Discord. Overall, for this semester, we have a good, working structure for our team to continue work, but we'll want to keep building on it as we accelerate progress to meet the goals we're aiming for. 

This project is advised by Professor Kevin Lu from the ECE department.

At the moment, we do not have any sponsors, but will hopefully find some in the near future. We are in communication however with alumnus professors and their associates as well as incorporations.