EE x96 Critical Design Review (CDR) Meetings

Thursday, 3 Apr 2008
and
Tuesday, 8 Apr 2008
POST 221

The Critical Design Review will be held after Spring Break. As before, the purpose of a design review is to present your design so far for critique and get feedback and suggetions from others. We will be doing the CDR as a meeting with me where you will discuss your design and be prepared to explain details and reasoning behind decisions.

The CDR is held later in the design process, after most of the implementation details have been finalized, before the final implementation and testing phases begin. Most (but maybe not all) important design decisions have been made. The purpose of the CDR is to review the entire design, and to see if there are things you might have forgotten or not considered before the design goes into fabrication.

So, you are not expected to have a complete working design at this point, but are expected to have completed the major steps of the design, and made the detailed decisions and begun fabrication. We will NOT be using ppt for this review.

This will be a TECHNICAL discussion, so "feathers" are not needed. You should bring, and someone on the team should be be ready to discuss, the following (on paper):

1. Block Diagram

A diagram showing the major modules of your project and showing the information passing between them. Label the connections with meaningful names, and show the size (in bits for hardware, bytes for software).

2. Full Schematic Diagrams

(for hardware), including all components with pin names and numbers and signal names. Include values for discrete components (e.g. resistors and capacitors).

3. Complete Data Sheets

for all of your compenents with more than 2 pins. You do not need the data sheet for your microcontroller, but should document what ports you are using for what purpose.

4. Complete Software Listing

of any code in your project, including documentation and comments.

5. What remains to be done.

Discuss potential problems you forsee and outstanding issues to be resolved or decisions to be made. If you have things you would like feedback or help on, identify them here.

6. The time line for completion of the project.

Update your Gantt Chart here with specific tasks, sub-tasks with milestones and deliverables (e.g. tests you plan to do and when the results will be available). What subtasks have been completed? Which are underway? Which are pending? Dicuss any problems with scheduling here.

7. Anything Else

including any hardware built so far, that you think will help explain your design and answer questions about it.

Meeting Schedule