Evaluation Questions 3

1. Describe the plan your group used to build the project.

We merely split up the project into manageable parts and worked one of them at a time until we were done. We then split up the research paper and had everyone work on their part and merge them together in the end.

2. Describe the process your group used to accomplish the task.

Our group went through a lot of trial and error, as throughout the creation of the circuit we made mistakes and had logical errors, nevertheless we carried on and fixed the problem. Also by breaking up the project into manageable steps we could work on one by one we made everything far easier and clearer.

3. Describe how the principles you used to build the project and apply to the engineering fields you studied

This week, our studies focused on biomedical and electrical engineering, so the principles we used to build the project came from the information we learned about several aspects of electrical engineering, including circuits, logic gates, Boolean algebra, etc. Each of these significant elements helped us to create a functional circuit that can detect the presence of coronavirus symptoms and can call emergency services, transmit symptoms to a medical care provider, or illuminate LED lights based on the amount of symptoms detected. In addition, we applied what we learned about Boolean algebra to create a logical circuit.

4. Each member’s role in the project.

Johnovan constructed the circuit while the rest of us helped because he shared his screen. Faith, Quinn, Kian, and Charlotte took the lead on the research paper. Quinn wrote about Raspberry Pi as an example of the circuit design process and Faith wrote about motherboards as another example. Kian wrote the introduction and researched possible future developments in circuit design. Charlotte drafted the abstract and wrote about the basic design process as it relates to electrical engineering. Kian took the lead on website integration. We worked together well this week.

5. Describe the successes and the obstacles your team encountered and how your team overcame the obstacles.

The success our team encountered was figuring out the logic board of the circuit. We were able to use what we learned to quickly create a truth table and logic equations from the table for each corresponding light. With this, we were able to quickly create a logic board using AND and OR gates and wire them to each corresponding LED light. Some obstacles that we faced were the flip flop and the voltage problem. We were not able to receive any voltages from the Q output of the flip flop but the Q bar output gave voltage, no matter what configuration we had for the switches. In turn, this caused the green LED to light up so at least we knew our logic board was functioning properly with more testing afterwards. However, we faced another problem when testing because wires that were not connected to any power source were receiving voltages. This was odd and as a group we concluded that our circuit should work in theory and we were just unable to troubleshoot the problems using the Circuit Lab software.

6. What would your next steps be to improve your project?

If we had more time, our next steps to improve the project would be to find a way to solve the voltage problem. We really wanted our circuit to function properly but with the given software, we could not figure it out. So, as a next step, our group could possibly use some other software and remake our circuit onto there and see if that functions, or we could work on our circuit on circuit lab even more to find a solution to the problem. If the former leads into frustration, then we will go with the latter and redo the circuit on another software, in hopes that the previous program was bugged and that a different program will make the circuit work.

7. Describe the lessons that you learned and how you will apply these lessons to future projects.

We learned how to design circuits using programs. We learned how to convert decimal numbers to binary and vice versa, how to determine the output of a circuit from the inputs, and how to draw a circuit based off the inputs and outputs. These are all valuable lessons that would make future projects go a lot more smoothly and quickly.

Knowing what you know now, how would you start your project differently?

If we could redo the project, we would probably try out different softwares to approach the voltage problem differently. The Circuit Lab software that we used may have been the problem, and designing the circuit on a different program may solve some of our issues. We would also not make the same mistakes in designing the circuit, as we now know what works and what doesn’t.

(sorry about the strange formatting of the numbers above, in the editor it all looks fine but when published it messes up)