Final Report Guidelines

At the end of the semester, the project pages will be locked, disabling any further changes. That last version will remain posted for as long as this wiki exists.

Content

The objective of your final report must be to provide all the necessary information so anybody that is interested can reproduce your project. Please keep this goal in mind when you describe each of the steps you took to complete your project.

Your final wiki page must, at least, contain the following sections:

1. Proposal (the same you wrote months ago) & Additional Material. Make sure this is accurate, your project may have changed since you started this process.
   • Overview.
   • Team Members.
   • Links
     • Your log
     • Your presentation
     • Your poster for demo
     • Your tutorial/howto
   • Objectives, include "reach goals" if appropriate
   • Challenges.
   • Gantt Chart.
   • Budget.
2. Design and Solutions
   • Description of each module of your project, and the solutions you designed to complete them.
   • Include the information necessary to explain the final design
     • Formulas with derivation
     • Diagrams of physical objects
     • Schematics of electrical systems
     • Psuedo-code, wireframes, state transition diagrams or flow charts that explain code designed
     • Formats for data to be stored (Table definitions or Entity Relationship Diagrams)
3. Results
   • Present all your results, including modules that only partially worked.
   • Discuss how the results compare to your original objectives.
   • Identify the critical decisions or factors in your project that stopped you from getting a better result (try to avoid obvious comments such as "we run out of time").
   • If the project had any ethical, privacy or safety issues related to it, discuss how you addressed them.
   • Include on the main wiki an image of the final project or short video of the working project.
4. Next Steps: Make sure to include a "Next Steps" section where you identify the next things you would do if you were to continue the project.
5. References
   • References should exist for important content used in the project
   • References should be numbered in the order they appear on the main page, see an example on the main page of this wiki.

Source Code and CAD files

You should not include huge chunks of source code in your final report. Instead, you should upload your source code to a public repository (e.g., GitHub or Bitbucket), and then provide a link to that repository in your final wiki.

Similarly, if you used the 3D printer then you should post the final versions of your CAD files in a public repository for 3D printer parts (e.g., Thingiverse or similar), or simply use the same repository that you used for your source code.

Please note that your code and CAD files must be, at least, minimally documented so it is clear how they are executed, and what is the purpose of each module or class in your program.

Evaluation

The evaluation of the final wiki page will follow the same lines as with regular reports. That is:

• it must be well organized and clearly written.
• you must use references when needed.
• figures must have captions, and be clearly explained.

Each group must write at least one HowTo (most projects can easily write two), which will be evaluated as part of the final report. Be original with your final wiki page, use videos, diagrams, and pictures to replace long (potentially boring) explanations. Aim for depth rather than length in your report, a good short explanation is always superior to a long dense paragraph.

Finally, all the equipment purchased with ESE funds must be returned and added to the inventory. Please coordinate with your TA to make the final inventory before the report's deadline. Remember to let us know of any parts that failed or broke so we can take them out of the inventory.

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If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
- Albert Einstein