Overall, we were very satisfied with the performance of our project. We met all of our stated goals, and added some features to the design, including a gain knob and an on/off switch. We were surprised at how reliably the signals got from the electrode to the circuit; we initially thought that the small signals would be drowned out by the noise in the circuit.

Although we accomplished our goals, there are several improvements that could have been made. The first improvement would be with the paddles. We found that the paddles were too low, and hit under the ball, causing the ball to bounce into the air. This caused problems, because the playing surface was too small to allow the ball to settle down before it got to the other side. This often caused the ball to fly off the table, ending the game after a few volleys. We also could have made the side walls taller. This would also have prevented the ball from flying off the table.

The limited time frame also prevented us from using a printed circuit board. We found that we had a number of issues with loose wires and bad connections, which made us spend a lot of time troubleshooting an already completed circuit.

It should be noted that velocity control was attempted. In order to achieve different servo velocities we simply incremented the servo position with different delays between increments. The larger the time duration between position increments, the slower the speed of the servo. We found that the servos were not fast enough to accomodate an sufficient range of velocities. If the servos had been slowed down any more, the game would have become too slow-paced and difficult to control. Perhaps with faster servos, and a larger budget, adequate velocity control could have been accomplished.

We would like to thank Professor Peshkin for his circuitry advice, Jeff Lutsey for his assistance with the initial stages of the project, and Professor Lynch for suggesting such an interesting, challenging, and enjoyable project.

To see a video of our project in action, please click this link.