\documentclass{article} \begin{document} \title{Weekly Blog} \author{Danila Fedorin} \date{November 16, 2020} \maketitle \section{Week 3} \subsection{Progress} There has been great progress in our group. We agreed to do one assignment for the Senior Capstone class a day, and have been following through with this plan. This way, we have initial drafts of every assignment very early on, and have a lot of time to review and edit them. In essense, we have a clear understanding of the project goals, initial drafts of many of the required documents that we have so far, and a good division of labor. \subsection{Problems} There have been no real problems with the team regarding the project. We did receive unexpected grades on certain individual assignments (seemingly indicating an inconsistent grading scheme), but since members of the group have scored full points on an assignment, we have a clear idea of what the next iteration of our submissions will look like. \subsection{Plan} The plan is continue to finish one assignment per day for the project. This will keep us on track, while at the same time having enough time to peer review with each other and other groups. Since one of the group members is writing a thesis with our client, he currently has weekly meetings with the client, and serves as our team's point of contact. We plan to schedule a weekly or bi-weekly meeting with the client with the entire group to facilitate communication, and to continue to document the project as per the (already plentiful) information already provided by the client, and as per the standard senior capstone assignments. \section{Week 4} \subsection{Progress} As per our agreement, we've been steadily completing drafts of various assignments, though not one per day (such effort is difficult to sustain with other existing commitments). We have scheduled a meeting with our advisor to discuss the purchase of various hardware components, and we will soon have an idea of what parts we will need. \subsection{Problems} Like last week, there have been no problems in the group. A group member missed a meeting by accident (due to being double-booked with a job), though it did not inconvenience the other group members, and we believe no action is necessary. The private git repository in which we store our class LaTeX files is temporarily inaccessible due to internet issues, but this had virtually no impact on the team's work. \subsection{Plan} Although we've toned down our pace, we intend to continue tackling assignments ahead of time to stay on top of writing and proofreading. Additionally, as described in the progress section, we have scheduled a meeting with our advisor, and plan on purchasing components shortly after the meeting takes place. \section{Week 5} \subsection{Progress} We have constructed preliminary designs for the various nodes and gateways that we will have set up throughout fields. With this, we also determined the components that we may need for the project - after a little more discussion with our advisor, we will be able to proceed with the purchases. Additionally, we have contacted our advisor to schedule a weekly meeting, and are waiting on a response. \subsection{Problems} We are as yet unsure about the source of funding for the purchase of our hardware. We have contacted the TA, and are waiting for more information. No other issues have come up. \subsection{Plan} The plan is to continue doing the class assignments, while at the same time doing additional research into the hardware components and mechanics of our project. We will stick with the prescribed class schedule otherwise, and continue to do some work on an assignment every day. The next assignment up is the first draft of the tech review. \section{Week 6} \subsection{Progress} Our first meeting with the client took place, and we had a good chance to discuss the expectations for the project, as well as future meeting schedules. We agreed on biweekly meetings from now on, however, since every member of the team (and the client!) has very packed schedules, these meetings are not required if progress can be made without them. By virtue of the team's work on the tech review, we have a much clearer understanding of the details of the project, and we're at this point only limited by access to funding. \subsection{Problems} The client has a very busy schedule, and our last meeting was actually moved and scheduled last-minuted. Though it seems like we're on the same frequency, so to speak, the lack of availability is somewhat unnerving. \subsection{Plan} The immediate plan is to secure funding and start working on prototyping. This will help us quickly discover flaws in our project and interate on the design. We will continue our ambitious attempt to stay ahead of writing assginments. \section{Week 7} \subsection{Progress} With the completion of the design document, the team has a good idea of what we're going to be doing, and who will be doing what. Given our last interaction with the client, we believe the design document closely represents what he would want, and thus, we are expecting no issues with getting the design document signed off. The team has agreed to perform a significant refactor / rewrite of the design document to address the structure and improve compatibility with the IEEE standard. This will happen in time for the submission of the second draft of the design document. \subsection{Problems} There are no problems in the way of our group at present, other than the question of funding. Since we are still iterating on the design, this question does not block us from making progress. \subsection{Plan} As mentioned in the progress section, the team intends to significantly alter the structure (not the content) of the design document as we currently have it. Other than that, there are no new plans since last week, other than completing other assignments required by CS461. \end{document}