An Introduction to Soil Types with Mr. Wakeman

Today, Richard Wakeman, Vice President at C.T. Male Associates, P.C. and most important of all Juliana's Dad, visited our class after school to explain to us how soil type may effect our project as well as provide resources to us to help measure soil type.One of the coolest things he showed us was a Soil Survey. Every county across the U.S. is required to have a soil survey done. This survey provides information on the soil type, growing conditions,...

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Bruce Hodge Lends Helping Hand

The InvenTeams Computer Integration Group recently met with local inventor, Bruce Hodge. Mr. Hodge is the founder of local company Tech Valley Technologies which produces targeting systems for use by the U.S. Military and in Police Officer Training.He discussed with us past projects he has done using LabView as well as using DAQs to acquire data. Bruce offered guidance to us by letting us bounce ideas off of him and him offering us multiple solutions to our problems and explaining to us the pros and cons of each. Mr. Hodge also introduced us to...

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The InvenTeam Mega Blog

For those of you that are unaware, there is a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam Class of 2008 Mega Blog where different representatives of the Lemelson Foundation, MIT, and past and present InvenTeam Members can post about the grant program and their teams accomplishments. I have just posted the first post for the SSHS InvenTeam on the blog. Check it out at the InvenTeams Blog Site to see what we have written as well as read about what other teams are up to around the Nation.- Elli...

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Got Sensors? We do!

One of the many resources available to us as a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam is the support of various corporations in fields related to what we are doing. Vernier Software & Technology is one of those companies generous enough to not only talk to us personally about what we are doing but also donate a few sensors to us. After talking personally to the president of the company, David Vernier himself, he offered to send us a few sensors to use as well as gave us a little guidance as to how to go about identifying future sensors to purchase. Since we...

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Happy Birthday AutoCAD!

On Thursday November, 15 AutoCAD celebrated its 25th anniversary. The Saratoga InvenTeam utilizes Autodesk Inventor(a similar product) to generate designs and prototypes for the PAFSI product. Such incredible technology has allowed for beautiful and complex 3D designs to be generated quickly and effectively. The result is increased individual productivity and possiblity for near unilimted achievements. "What AutoCAD did, if you look at a snapshot of the past 25 years, was really to democratize computer-aided drafting,"-Mark Fritts senior manager...

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An Interesting Side Note

In researching various sensors and power sources for our PAFSI device, we ran across in article about a associate professor of agriculture who has been able to optimize sensors and power sources for use in a plant environment.  Lei Tian was featured in the June 2007 issue of Growing magazine for his beta version of a fully autonomous weed removal robot.  The weed-seeking robot according to Tian's website, "explores the theory, implementation,...

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New Blog Features

Hey Everyone -Using the free tracking software from Google Analytics we have been monitoring the traffic on our blog since its inception at the start of the project. Using this data we have been able to watch as visitors rushed to our site after seeing us on the news or reading about us on the paper and now that we have reached over 250 visitors to our site we are happy to offer a new way to keep up on whats going on with the Saratoga Springs High School InvenTeam.As you will notice if you scroll down the page we now have two new features. Google...

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First Visit with Leigh Estabrooks

Today we had our first visit from MIT. Leigh Estabrooks, a grant officer for the Lemelson-MIT Program's InvenTeams came to class to check in on our progress and update us on how the InvenTeam process works. After reviewing Ms. Estabrooks' PowerPoint presentation on the InvenTeam as a whole, each group leader from our three inter-project research groups presented a progress report for their individual grou...

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Web Site

I invite you to take a look at our web site:SaratogaEDD.googlepages.comThe site features information about our project, an overview of Saratoga Springs High School's Project Lead the Way program, and projects previously completed in the Engineering Design and Development class. Check back for updates as our project continu...

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In The News: Saratogian Article

Grant Enables Invention Project By Ann Marie French, The Saratogian10/31/2007SARATOGA SPRINGS - Some seniors at Saratoga Springs High School have been given an opportunity to develop an invention that could change the way people plant gardens and crops on both a local and global level. The group, Saratoga Springs InvenTeam, is made up of 14 seniors enrolled in Michael Gallagher's Engineering, Design and Development course. They were recently awarded...

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In the News: An Article at CNet News

I was wandering around the internet today and guess what I found. An article about the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams Program on the CNet News Web-Site. It does not specifically mention our team but as you will see we are mentioned in the comments. Hopefully this article will bring world-wide attention to the InvenTeams as well as world-wide attention to our group. Check it out.- Elli...

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Tom White's Enlightening Visit

This Wednesday, Tom White visited our Inventeam group in order to give us a basic preview of LabVIEW's capabilities. It was very enlightening!First, Mr. White showed us a video of a LabVIEW-powered robot that, with feedback, could sustain a bipedal walking motion; it did so by obtaining and analyzing data from accelerometers in real time. We then discussed LabVIEW's ability to create logic circuits and integrate with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. This verified LabVIEW's potential as a very powerful software package.He then showed us a piece of...

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