Final Project

Our project changed dramatically over time. We ended up making a car with a wheel, an ignition button, and a throttle. I did most of the coding work on the project, but I didn't have enough time to flesh out all the features that I really wanted to put in. Overall, I feel like the project went well, considering with the final design I only had less than 3 hours to work on it. With enough time and financial support, I think the final project could have been something like this:

Arduino Project

I meant to post this a while ago since I had written offline. This is the start of our Arduino project, which is a circuit/program based effort. As the only member of iSerbs that has had any serious experience with coding (in this case, more importantly, the C language), I think I will be doing the coding work. This is an example of what our goal is with this project:

SOM

I feel like a healthy topic of discussion on here would be AED (Art and Engineering Design) trip to SOM (Skidmore, Owins, and Merill Limited Liability Partnership) in downtown Chicago. We had to wake up at the crack of dawn to catch a Greyhound bus, so once we arrived to the office I was pretty exhausted already. We first saw in the lobby a mini-model of the entire downtown area as well as a large part of River North. It was really interesting seeing the relationship between geographic location and building height across the entire city at once, typically a little harder to observe from a single image. Following that we were escorted to one of the upper floors to meet with one of the employees of the company. The company took up 2.5 floors, and the lobby had models of some new buildings and structures they were working on. Accompanying those was another model of Chicago, this time though, there were gray and white buildings, gray buildings being ones that SOM had some hand in designing, which including the Hancock Tower, the Sears (Willis) Tower, and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millenium Park (the giant structure overlooking the stage more specifically). We were able to look at some urban planning the company was doing in Eastern Asia as well, which really showed us the diversity of some of the work. We ended with a presentation by 3 different employees on different jobs and tasks within the company, one of whom had a very sleep-inducing voice. The group then left the company with a few hours to spare before having to reach the train, so we visited Millennium Park together before splitting into two groups, one headed for the Art Institute and the other for the Water Tower before rejoining and getting on the train together. Overall, I learned a lot and enjoyed myself, so I would say it was a fun and productive trip

iCheckpoint

Meant to update about the iCheckpoint a few days ago, but obviously other things have preoccupied me, more importantly the upcoming tests and midterm I have. I thought the iCheckpoint went very well. My iCommunity team (Art and Engineering Design), and more specifically the Social/Identity team, presented our powerpoint describing who we are and what we're doing. This involved the lunch party we hosted, the meetings we have had and are going to have with companies, and a "Meet the Team" sort of presentation. Each member of the Social/Identity section presented their role in the team as well as a small description of a specific part of the team. We had a good reaction to the youtube video that was put together as well. Coming up is our trip to Chicago to meet with SOM (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP) and see what they do over there. I am excited for that trip, especially since it will be so close to home. We start our new ENG198 projects on Monday, which is a mechanized walker, and I cannot wait to work on that. If anything, I'll try to make it look like the picture above

The Tournament

Forgot to update yesterday! I realized it would be a hard task, didn't think it would happen so quickly. I thought about updating yesterday while walking between classes, but by the time I got home it had completely slipped my mind. More importantly however, the tournament went very well. We won first in the races every time in our division. What we ended up doing to help with the heating up process is holding the burner on pre-race to heat up the chamber faster and covering the inside of the bottom of the chassis in ethanol for a bigger flame. The problem we found with this was that the solder holding the refuel pipe on the steam chamber ruptured and we had to do a few minor repairs before setting it back on the track. This damage would require more time to repair however, since our performance in the consequent race proved below satisfactory. The overall contest ended well I think, and I am very excited for the next project.

Blogging

I am not a blogger and do not make any claim toward that effect. I have tried Twitter, but failed to remember to "twitter" and ended up just forgetting about it. My lack of need for this outlet has proven to be a damper on my blogging here, for I just find no need to tell people about what I had for breakfast. Hopefully though, with a much more focused effort now, I will be able to post more frequently and explain to all 3 people reading my account about what I had learned. As a non-blogger blogging, this experience is quite foreign to me, but I suppose that is the entire idea behind the exercise. I without doubt recognize the potential and usefulness of having such a resource, most importantly in getting information out quickly and easily to a massive number of people. Over the next week, I will attempt to put at least a little bit of information up every day. This action should prove to be easier with more experience, and doing it every day should be a good experiment of that idea.

Midway through the Steam Car

My team, comprised of Andrew, Sandra, and Mike, and I have been working with consistent progress on building a mini steam car. Our main goal is efficiency, but we make sure to put an emphasis on style and design while we're working. There has been relative ease with cutting and bending the metal. The chassis seems to be holding, as well as the canister where the steam will be and the turbine itself. The only problem we're encountering for now is soldering the wheels into position. The solder is building up underneath connecting parts and doesn't seem to want to go on top. Our next session is on Monday, and I'm hoping to address that issue. For the whole body, we used the unpainted side of the metal so that we could paint it ourselves. We've decided to go with a black finish because not only will it give the car a good look, but black absorbs the most heat and will therefore make the steam hotter and hence, the car faster. We will see whatever new challenges rise up on Monday, and hopefully be able to get around them.