[tech] Snack machine mods

[Andrew Adamson]

On Fri, 17 Apr 2015, committee at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au wrote:

> A Committee Meeting will be held on Tuesday, 21 April 2015 at 17:30 unless otherwise stated.
> 
> The meeting will be held in the UCC Clubroom.
> 
> ##Action Items
> 
> 
> General Business
> ----------------
> - [BG3]: Budget (and spend) $1300 on Coin Mech and Note Mech

While I think the project to upgrade the snack machine is worthwhile and 
achievable, I object to the above expenditure being approved (for now) for 
the following reasons: 

1. A general lack of planning; aside from a general project outline at the 
committee meeting on March 31, there has been no planning documentation 
detailing how all the components will interact and be installed. This 
means that others will not be able to check and/or have input on the 
design. At the very least a full bill of materials should be provided. See 
http://wiki.ucc.asn.au/CokeMachineRebuild for an example. It would also be 
good if the architecture of the proposed system could be discussed on the 
lists, as I remain unconvinced that a mini-pc and/or a raspi are necessary 
or desirable in the system.

2. No guarantee that the person doing the project will be able to finish 
it. [BG3] has completed some great projects with the club, but he has a 
lot of projects on his list and as far as I know this is his first big 
electronics project. Lack of time and lack of knowledge are real risks in 
this project and I am concerned that the club may not get a functioning 
system for the proposed $1300. Past projects have sometimes required that 
the person doing it pay for some or all of the project out of their own 
pocket, and are then reimbursed by the club on completion. I urge 
committee to consider this given the aforementioned lack of planning.

Andrew Adamson
bob at ucc.asn.au

|"If you can't beat them, join them, and then beat them."                |
| ---Peter's Laws                                                        |