Reverse Engineering

EVIDENCE OF WORK

For our Reverse Engineering Project, our class was tasked with fully disassembling an object, identifying its components, and analyzing its various elements. My group—consisting of Gracie, Owen, and Beatriz—decided to focus on an old VTECH home phone. We each concentrated on a different phone aspect, such as its functionality, manufacturing process, materials, and overall structure. We created a Gantt chart to ensure we stayed organized and completed our work promptly. 

Our final project includes a comprehensive report detailing our analysis of the phone, along with sketches of each component and a slideshow presentation. The sketches are included in the report. Key features of our project involve a redesign of the phone with some enhancements, implementing these improvements, and thoroughly explaining how the device operates.

Content 

In our presentation about the VTECH home phone, my group and I covered several key aspects of the device that illustrated our thorough analysis. First, we provided an overview of its functionality, explaining how it operated and detailing the various features that enhanced user experience, such as caller ID, call waiting, and the ability to store contacts. This section highlighted the phone's practicality in everyday use and how it met the needs of its users.

Next, we discussed the manufacturing process and materials used in the phone’s construction, emphasizing the importance of each material in contributing to the phone's durability and overall performance. We examined components like the plastic casing and electronic circuit boards, explaining how they were designed to withstand wear and tear while maintaining functionality.

We also presented detailed sketches of the phone’s components, illustrating the internal structure and how each part contributed to its overall functionality. These visuals helped clarify complex mechanisms, making it easier for the audience to understand the relationships between different components.

Finally, we shared our redesign ideas, showcasing the proposed enhancements we identified during our analysis. We discussed how these changes aimed to improve usability, such as incorporating a larger battery to enhance a longer life span of the phone as we found the device died very quickly.

Overall, our goal was to provide a comprehensive understanding of the VTECH home phone, illustrating not only its design and functionality but also our insights from the reverse engineering process, which allowed us to appreciate the intricacies of this everyday device.

Reflection

Overall, I felt our project on the VTECH home phone went very well. Even when we had trouble identifying the specific model, we worked together to find solutions and eventually found the model. When one of us found a helpful website, we shared it with the whole group, which made our research more efficient. This teamwork was key to our success.

Another strength of our project was the strong work ethic of everyone in the group. We completed our tasks on time and followed the Gantt Chart. My group and I stayed focused during class and showed our commitment to learning throughout the project.

For future projects, there are a few areas where we can improve. We should set aside more time for the actual presentation and go over our talking points beforehand. I feel as though we spent to much time on the researching part of the project and not enough time on the presentation. In this project, we only gave ourselves a day to finish the slideshow, thinking it would be easy to transfer information from the report. While we did end up with a solid presentation, having extra time to check for mistakes would have helped. Next time, I will focus on improving our communication of timing to make the presentation smoother.