Mock Presentation

Description

Similar to the Design Doc Check and the Mock Demo, the Mock Presentation is an informal, mandatory event designed to better prepare you for your Final Presentation. In these sessions, you will present a few of your slides (about 10-15 minutes), and get feedback from the course staff as well as a few invited Department of Communication TAs. You will also be able to see a few of your peers' Mock Presentations, as there are up to 3 teams per time slot.

Requirements and Grading

The Mock Presentation is meant to be an opportunity for you to get feedback on a subset of your final presentation. It is recommended that you choose some aspect of your project, and present the design, results, and conclusions from that aspect. In order to get relevant feedback on your presentation skills, your Mock Presentation should also have an introduction and conclusion. You will receive feedback on your delivery, the format of your slides, and the organization of your presentation. Your slides should generally include:

  1. Title slide: Names, group #, title.
  2. Introduction slide: What is the project?
  3. Objective slide: What problem does this solve?
  4. Design Slides: A few slides on design, requirements and verification (should include block diagram, math, graphs, figures, tables).
  5. Conclusion: Wrap things up, future work.

Mock presentation is graded credit/no credit based on attendance and apparent effort; showing up completely unprepared will earn no credit.

Submission and Deadlines

Sign-up is handled through PACE. Time slots are 1 hour long, and multiple groups will share a time slot. This will give you an opportunity to give and receive feedback from your peers. You will be required to stay until all groups have presented and received feedback.

The Marching Band Assistant

Wynter Chen, Alyssa Louise Licudine, Prashant Shankar

The Marching Band Assistant

Featured Project

NetID/Names

wynterc2 (Wynter Chen), alyssal3 (Alyssa Licudine), shankar7 (Prashant Shankar)

Problem

Drum majors lead and conduct marching bands. One of their main jobs is to maintain tempo for the musicians by moving their hands in specific patterns. However, many drum majors, especially high school students, need to learn how to conduct specific tempos off the top of their head and maintain a consistent tempo without assistance for performances. Even those with musical experience have difficulty knowing for certain what tempo they're conducting without a metronome.

Solution Overview

Our project consists of an arm attachment that aids drum major conducting. The attachment contains an accelerometer that helps determine the tempo in beats per minute via hand movement. A display shows the beats per minute, which allows the drum major to adjust their speed as necessary in real time. The microcontroller data is wirelessly transmitted, and a program can be downloaded that not only visualizes the data in real-time, but provides an option to save recorded data for later. There is also a convenient charging port for the device.

This project is a unique invention that aims to help marching bands. There have been previous projects and inventions that have also digitized the conducting experience, such as the Digital Conducting Baton from Spring 2015. However, these have been in the form of a baton rather than a glove, and are used to alter music files as opposed to providing feedback. Additionally, orchestra conductors use very delicate motions with a baton, while drum majors create large, sharper motions with their arms; thus, we believed that an arm attachment was better suited for marching band usage. Unlike other applications that only integrate digital instruments, this project seeks to assist live performers.

Link to RFA: https://courses.grainger.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=37939

Project Videos