When starting any new project, it is always good to find out as much as possible, so there are no surprises later on. As it has been said by some, “There’s always time to do it over, but rarely time to do it right!” A bit of upfront design time can go a long, long way to getting what you want in the end, and allowing for expansion in the future. It is incredibly rare that something comes across my desk or screen as fully formed. Part of what you pay for with any consultant is the years of experience, and breadth of problems that they have solved. These checklists are free ways of getting a jump on things, and figuring out what you really want.
Towards this end, a few checklists have been created; one of them is for more industrial projects, which involve more sensors, controls, and data acquisition questions, and one is for more art related projects, which have some more general questions. Feel free to look over both of them, there is some crossover.
For industrial projects, use this checklist.
For art projects, use this checklist.