Monday, June 22, 2015

The End of the AutoGarden

Time has come and passed, decisions have been made, both tactical and strategically, the end is near, and according to some, according to the very, very select few who know what they are talking about, it has been said, that the time for the Auto-Garden subset of EDD class, is now, and the shining sun beyond the horizons of the presentation, is nothing but imminent victory.  We have successful integrated our electronics with our microcontroller, and all systems are set to go.  Our system functions as follows:
 The Arduino microcontroller sends signals opening and closing relays turning on and off pumps and lights, which are set into an aesthetically lamp design.  The stem of this lamp houses all wires, protecting all but the pump leads from water and a short circuit.  Where a normal lamp is positioned right side up, ours is upside down.  Here is a picture.

Nitinol Final Update


The Stirling engine group has been hard at work. We have finalized our design.
A brief overview of the flow of energy that makes our machine work: The waste
heat leaving the car's combustion engine causes the Stirling engine to run. This
then creates electrical energy that goes to the charge controller. The energy
flows from the charge controller to a battery, charging the battery. The energy
that leaves the battery goes to the power inverter where it is converted from
direct current to alternating current. Alternating current enables us to power
our heaters. We added new parts to the project, including the Stirling box. This
is an insulating box with openings that allow for the radiator fluid to flow
through it (we are capturing heat from radiator fluid to power the Stirling
engine). The hot side of the Stirling engine is also in this box. Inside of the
box, a copper tube carries the fluid from one side to the other while letting
some of the heat transfer to the engine. It also prevents the rest of the car's
interior from getting too hot. We have been preparing for the final
presentation. I have been in charge of making the PowerPoint. People from my
team have been contributing to the PowerPoint as well.  The Stirling engine team
has been building a prototype for our machine. We are giving our final
prevention today on June 22.

End of the year - in the words of our Fearless Leader

 Throughout this year, our team has achieved more than I could've imagined
we would.
 The development of an eco-friendly car heater, the creation of an
autonomous garden, and the expansion of last year's Engineering Young
Engineers(EYE) have all taken place in this year's class. At the start of the
year we made up two separate groups, the continuation of EYE and what we called
the nitinol group. After consideration, we split into three groups, EYE, the
Auto-garden group, and the Stirling Engine group.
    In EYE, we have expanded
our outreach to new areas outside of Saratoga Springs while also increasing our
influence in our home town. We have also created new tools for expansion,
allowing new schools to adopt our programs on their own. Developments like this
will allow the transitions in the future to proceed smoothly.
    In the
Auto-garden group, we have developed an aesthetically pleasing, autonomous
gardening system. With help from local gardening store owners and New York City
residents we have created a prototype that will raise a Moth Orchid with almost
no human interaction.
    In the Stirling Engine group we tackled the problem
of heating your car quickly during the winter. Using an environmentally friendly
heat engine to store the wasted energy from a combustion engine, we developed a
clean way to instantly heat your car.
    The Engineering Design Development
class of 2015 has overcome a lot of problem throughout the year. From the
beginning of the year, we were lacking the specific resource time.  On a
crunched time schedule, we worked hard and managed to do some remarkable things.