Project Trailblazer Requirements

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Project Trailblazer's high-level requirements are divided into three categories: safety, operations, and suppliers. Each requirement discussed here has a short title, a narrative describing the purpose of the requirement, and a reference to the chapter where the requirement is implemented.

TIP

Defining high-level requirements and then forming the project's system architecture helps developers and programmers understand the big picture. The requirements help answer the why questions and the architecture answers how a project is connected together.

Safety Requirements

Safety is a prime concern at Silverjack. Quickly changing weather conditions could pose a serious health threat to guests and employees. The mountain peaks' temperatures and visibilities always differ from those of the village. Project Trailblazer will collect and display various resort temperatures and visibilities.

Safety Requirement 1: Temperature Information

The temperature differential between the mountain base and peaks routinely exceeds 30 degrees. This differential could affect the health of guests, especially those who are inexperienced or unprepared. Project Trailblazer should collect and store the current temperatures for all key mountain locations. Project Trailblazer should display current temperature readings at the bottom of each lift. Project Trailblazer should provide a Web page displaying all the current temperatures.

Temperature information collection and display is addressed in Chapter 10, "Synchronous Serial Communication Interfacing." Web integration is addressed in Chapter 12, "System Integration."

Safety Requirement 2: Visual Information

Mountaintop visibility could affect the health of inexperienced or unprepared guests. Project Trailblazer should collect and store current visibility information in the form of still images for all key mountaintop locations. Project Trailblazer should provide Web pages that display recent still images.

Visual information collection is addressed in Chapter 8, "USB Interfacing." Visual information distribution is addressed in Chapter 12.

Operations Requirements

The Operations Department manages and maintains Silverjack's equipment. Operations seeks high efficiency at a low cost and achieves this through the effective use of manpower and low-cost equipment. Project Trailblazer addresses operations requirements in these areas: guest activities, snow-making control, lift monitoring, race timing, and music playback.

Operations Requirement 1: Guest Authentication

Project Trailblazer should allow lift access to guests who have proper authentication. Project Trailblazer must interface with the ticket office's point-of-sale system. Project Trailblazer should give the lift operator and guest a visual indication of proper authentication.

Guest authentication acquisition and permission are addressed in Chapter 6, "Asynchronous Serial Communication Interfacing."

Operations Requirement 2: Guest Messaging

Project Trailblazer should provide a mechanism to deliver personalized messages of a personal or an emergency nature to individual guests. A message should be delivered prior lift access. Project Trailblazer should have the capability to require the guest to acknowledge receipt of a message.

Patron messaging distribution and acknowledgement are addressed in Chapter 12.

Operations Requirement 3: Guest Tracking

Project Trailblazer should provide a mechanism to track guest movement. Operations will use this data in trend analysis for strategic planning. Guests might use this data for curiosity purposes.

Guest tracking distribution is addressed in Chapter 12.

Operations Requirement 4: Snow-Making Control

Project Trailblazer should provide a mechanism to control the snow-making equipment from the OCC. Primarily, this implies remote control of mountaintop-located water valves.

Snow-making control is addressed in Chapter 7, "Parallel Port Interfacing" and Chapter 9, "Memory I/O Interfacing."

Operations Requirement 5: Lift Monitoring

Project Trailblazer should monitor the operation of each lift and should provide instantaneous and historical lift operation data in a graphical form.

Lift monitoring acquisition is addressed in Chapters 7 and 9. Lift monitoring information distribution is addressed in Chapter 12.

Operations Requirement 6: Race Timing

Project Trailblazer should record and store race times, to 1-millisecond accuracy. Project Trailblazer should display intermediate and final race times at the racecourse finish line. Project Trailblazer should distribute race results through a Web interface.

Ski race timing acquisition is addressed in Chapters 11, "Using Interrupts For Timing." Race results distribution is addressed in Chapter 12.

Operations Requirement 7: Music Playback

Project Trailblazer should provide music playback functionality for the AirPark and the village. The OCC should control song selection and deliver songs to the music playback equipment via the network.

Music playback is addressed in Chapter 8 and song control is addressed in Chapter 12.

Supplier Requirements

Project Trailblazer can take two approaches to ensure lower equipment expenditures: Use no single-source supplier of equipment and do not design any complex circuit boards (that is, it should use low-cost commercial off-the-shelf hardware).

Supplier Requirement 1: No Single-Source Suppliers

Project Trailblazer should be designed with hardware and software that's available from multiple sources. Use of single-source suppliers results in loss of competitive pricing and alternative selection.

Supplier selection is addressed in Chapter 3, "Selecting a Platform and Installing Tool Sets."

Supplier Requirement 2: Low-cost Commercial Off-the-Shelf Hardware

Project Trailblazer should be designed with hardware that's available as part of a manufacturer's standard product line. No custom CPU boards should be designed.

Hardware selection is addressed in Chapter 3.

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