Being a three-men team and having near-zero experience in electronics and coding, our team undoubtedly learnt many invaluable knowledge and skillsets throughout the entire MnT journey. These shaped our growth as a team and on an individual level. Here are our three main takeaways.

Key Takeaways

  • Teamwork

    Coming from different majors, our team had broader perspectives when approaching solutions and was able to leverage on one another's strengths and skillsets. With effective communication and appropriate allocation of workload, our team had a great working experience!

  • Adaptability

    Our team was resourceful and made use of already available materials for our final product. For instance, we took reference from the design of an online launcher kit, as well as the mechanisms behind a nerf gun launcher.

  • 3D Modelling

    An integral portion of our project involved 3D modelling of our components and the gorillas (which turned out really well!) It was a struggle initially to familiarise ourselves with Fusion360 in a short amount of time, but with consistent effort, we managed to become adequately well-versed and Fusion360 became a great visualisation and creation tool.



 


However, our journey was not always smooth-sailing. We encountered countless obstacles, mostly pertaining to our electrical components. Nonetheless, we managed to overcome and mitigate them as a team, and are proud of our achievements.


Challenges

            

                

                    
    
                                    
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    Wiring
    

    Many components were not working initially, mainly due to the weak connections on our Nano, despite securing the wires in place. To overcome it:
    

      

    1. We rearranged our circuit layout to ensure appropriate connection of our components.
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    2. We organised our wires using the Arduino Nano shield and this thankfully improved our connections and made our numerous wires slightly less messy.
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    Unreliable Electronics
    

    Our electrical components kept malfunctioning despite successful testing the previous sessions, and much time was spent to troubleshoot them. We had to conduct repeated checking of our connections, speaker and the 9v battery in the case of our motors. 
                
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    Battery
    

    One issue we were still unable to overcome would be the battery. Our team planned to power the entire game using batteries. However, the connection module failed repeatedly and we resorted to using powerbanks in the end, which may not be the most user friendly.
                
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