Individual Progress Report

Description

The Individual Progress Report (IPR) is a chance to put your contributions to the team's progress in writing. The report will discuss not only the components and subsystems you have personally been responsible for, but what components you have helped work on as well. It is important to talk about the relation between your work and your teammates' work as well.

Requirements and Grading

This report should be 5-12 pages of your own work. This means that you cannot take paragraphs/text from your Design Review document, since that was a collaborative effort. The IPR Grading Rubric describes what we look for in grading this assignment. The requirements are expanded on below:

  1. General: Concise writing is encouraged, but it is important that all pertinent information is conveyed. All figures should be labeled and formatted consistently.
  2. Formatting: Please refer to the Final Report Guidelines for general writing guidelines, since the format of this report should be very similar to that of the final report. Note that each component of the Final Report may be tailored to the parts of the project the individual has been active in.
  3. Introduction: First, discuss what portion of the system you have been active in designing connects to which portion of a different subsystem, and how these interact to complete an overall objective. Then discuss what you have accomplished, what you are currently working on, and what you still have left to do.
  4. Design: Discuss the design work you have done so far. It is expected that you have done calculations and/or found relevant equations, created circuits for your parts of the project, and simulated / drawn schematics for your parts. You may have already, at a high level, discussed how your part fits into the rest of the project, but you should expand on the technical details and interface between your module(s) and the other modules of the project.
  5. Verification: Testing and verification is also very important. Make sure you describe each test that was performed and its procedure in detail, and give quantitative, meaningful results. Also describe tests that have yet to be performed. We should be convinced that if all your tests will pass, your part of the project will work.
  6. Conclusion: Discuss a plan and timeline for completing your responsibilities and your project as a whole. Also explain the ethical considerations of your project by consulting the IEEE Code of Ethics, ACM Code of Ethics, or another relevant Code of Ethics.
  7. Citations: You need citations. Cite sources for equations, Application Notes you referenced in your design, and any literature you used to help design or verify your work. If you checked something from another course's lecture slides, Google'd for things related to your project, or anything similar, then you have something you need to cite. At the very least, since you have talked about the ethical considerations of your project as it relates to a published code of ethics (e.g., IEEE or ACM), you should cite those!

Submission and Deadlines

The IPR should be submitted on canvas in PDF format by the deadline listed on the Course Calendar.

S.I.P. (Smart Irrigation Project)

Jackson Lenz, James McMahon

S.I.P. (Smart Irrigation Project)

Featured Project

Jackson Lenz

James McMahon

Our project is to be a reliable, robust, and intelligent irrigation controller for use in areas where reliable weather prediction, water supply, and power supply are not found.

Upon completion of the project, our device will be able to determine the moisture level of the soil, the water level in a water tank, and the temperature, humidity, insolation, and barometric pressure of the environment. It will perform some processing on the observed environmental factors to determine if rain can be expected soon, Comparing this knowledge to the dampness of the soil and the amount of water in reserves will either trigger a command to begin irrigation or maintain a command to not irrigate the fields. This device will allow farmers to make much more efficient use of precious water and also avoid dehydrating crops to death.

In developing nations, power is also of concern because it is not as readily available as power here in the United States. For that reason, our device will incorporate several amp-hours of energy storage in the form of rechargeable, maintenance-free, lead acid batteries. These batteries will charge while power is available from the grid and discharge when power is no longer available. This will allow for uninterrupted control of irrigation. When power is available from the grid, our device will be powered by the grid. At other times, the batteries will supply the required power.

The project is titled S.I.P. because it will reduce water wasted and will be very power efficient (by extremely conservative estimates, able to run for 70 hours without input from the grid), thus sipping on both power and water.

We welcome all questions and comments regarding our project in its current form.

Thank you all very much for you time and consideration!