The Project Goal Black Hole

The flash based telepresence rc car project was one of the most ambitious things I have done in my spare time. Consequently, it took nearly two years of nights and weekends to finish the project. The time was definitely not wasted as it provided immense electrical engineering learning opportunities. I have also gained a greater respect then ever for clearly thinking about and defining a projects goals.

While the telepresence rc car was meant to be an electrical engineering focused project, the current one I am working on is intended to be a programming project. Unfortunately something always happens as you make original products in that they seem to give birth to sub projects. This is especially true if you are like me; and are extremely nit picky about what happens behind the scenes to make the core technology work. I could have finished the electrical engineering required for the telepresence RC car project simply by putting a servo controller in the car and I perhaps would have saved a year of time.

I reluctantly had to add a core learning focus that I am not too excited about to my current major learning goals this round; which will probably add one months time to this project. My personal deadline for this one is June 1st 2010.

The current major learning goals for this project are:

1. Master practical encryption techniques for secure multimedia files/streams. Subsequently this also requires data integrity checking and re-transmission.
2. Implement the art of automatically traversing firewalls and routers allowing me to make applications that dont requite network configuration.
3. Learn how to safely implement sensors into more friendly materials.
4. I am going to have to spend significant time making a really good user interface for this one.

A moderate explanation of the first four points follows:

1. We live in a world where our lives are becoming ever more public. It is important when communicating under the assumption of privacy to actually ensure privacy. How would each of us feel if our mail were open when we got it? How would we feel if our semi-private messages to others on Facebook were suddenly made more public (Which happened with the Jan 4th 2010 privacy policy change)? It feels creepy to think of other people spying on your personal affairs. Its up to technology implementors of communication tools to implement them as properly as their laws allow them to.

2. Average consumers have no clue what a firewall even does. Most of the technology I work with requires some sort of router and firewall configuration that these people could never do. Its imperative that network applications can take care of their own network configurations.

3. Using communication technology normally means that you are using gobs of electronics housed in rigid plastic enclosures. I want to try and go the opposite direction with this one and house it inside a pillow. In doing research at JoAnn Fabrics; I am concerned about the flammability of the stuffing material I will be using. I would feel terrible if one of my prototypes caught on fire inadvertently and caused a massive amount of damage. I am going to have to figure out some how to ensure that even if it were to catch on fire that it would be self contained. This leg of the project wont come until later in the game and could take a TON of work to figure out.

4. This is the first of my huge projects that I am going to have to focus on user interface with. In the past, others have done the interface, or I knew the project was targeted toward major engineers. This one will be used by people that may not be as familiar with technology as I am. My plan is to make four initial prototypes in two pairs, so out of the gate this one will be used by others. I was bummed about having to add this one because its not something I planned on at all.

The first pair is for my June 1st date. The others wont take very long if the first pair works as planned. As you can see, the more you expand on a project the more and more time you find it taking up. As a wise passage that I read during my years in college said: "one of the few things you cant get back in life is time".