Over the past few days you may have noticed some serious changes and upgrades to our blog. Along with new videos being posted we have also now paid tribute to our sponsors and added a new poll feature. Yeah, I know the poll is kind of lame. Just give it a whirl. It will be cool to see what the results will be.Otherwise, enjoy checking out the cool new stuff we have added and stay tuned for more to come.- Elli...
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Today in class, with help from Mr. Gallaghers wonderful fiancée Miss Holmes, we threw Mr. Gallagher the greatest birthday party ever. The room was decorated with balloon, streamers, and blown up pictures of Mr. Gallagher in middle school all over the room. It could not have been any more gaudy and obnoxious if we tried.Happy Birthday Mr. Gallagher! Thank you so much for being the dedicated and enthusiastic teacher you are. Not only would our InvenTeam...
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
VIDEO NOT AVAILABLEFOR INFORMATION SEND E-MAIL TO:michaelpgallagher@gmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------When we released our Information/Overview Video we also sent an e-mail to various members of the Cornell Horticulture Department. Up until very recently we had not told them that their packet, "Site Assessment for Gardeners", was the basis for our entire project. Within twenty-four hours we began receiving enthusiastic responses from various gardening experts. We received numerous questions as to what our...
Monday, January 28, 2008
VIDEO NOT AVAILABLEFOR INFORMATION SEND E-MAIL TO:michaelpgallagher@gmail.com---------------------------------------------------------------Above is the Saratoga Springs HS InvenTeams Informational/Overview Video. This video was made to explain our goals to the many people and organizations that are helping us as well as those whose help we would like to enlist. A major part of this video is an explanation of the cornerstone of our project the Cornell "Site Assessment for Gardening" Workbook. As you read in Juliana's previous post we have sent...
I think it is safe to say that at one point in every engineers life he or she plays with Legos. Legos are arguably the greatest toy ever invented and today marks the 50th Anniversary of the Lego brick. In celebration Google got a little creative with their logo, Gizmodo made a really sweet timetable, and even Lego is celebrating with a commemorative Town Plan set based on one of their first sets.Legos were a major part of my childhood as well as...
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Earlier this week I contacted some of the contributors to the Site Assessment for Gardeners Workbook. This is one of the many valuable resources offered by Cornell University that has been very useful to our project. It outlines exactly what a gardener would need to discern about their gardening site in order to properly assess which plants to grow there. In our case, it has shown us exactly what variables our device will need to measure. As we...
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
One revolutionary component of the Garden Consultant is the physical device that will acquire data from the soil. Unfortunately, this means we need a physical device to acquire data. In our research, we have found several possibilities for DAQs (Data AcQuisition devices).Mr. Tom White generously donated a Vernier SensorDAQ to help us along. After hearing about our project, Mr. David Vernier donated several sensors including a soil moisture sensor and a temperature probe. These senors were designed for the SensorDAQ and are automatically detected...
Thursday, January 17, 2008
A few days ago Leigh Estabrooks and other people from Lemelson-MIT asked all of the 2007-2008 InvenTeams to answer a few questions regarding our views on the environment and the future of engineering. A few other team members and I had a brief chat about the questions proposed and submitted our response to the blog. With the current state of the environment and the changes that we are seeing in the environment world-wide it is important that we as future engineers consider the effects we have on the environment and work to make the world a better...
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The Saratoga Springs HS InvenTeam would like to thank local internet provider Spa.Net for hosting the server we are using (which was donated by Bruce Hodge). After the recent donation we had to find a service provider to host the server. Thanks to generosity of Spa.Net we will have our server and the Garden Consultant up and running in no time.Thank you so much for your help and support and we look forward to showing you the cool work we are doing...
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The image on the left is from an article in Times Union "People who make a difference" That's Bruce all right!!! He was a feature recipient receiving this dignified distinction for his innovative work with his targeting systems as well as holding several patents. He has helped immensely giving of his time and bringing a vast knowledge and passion for creativity.Bruce Hodge met with us again this last Monday. He taught us to use a program called NoteTab....
Sunday, January 6, 2008
For the past month or so the Saratoga Springs HS InvenTeam has been making use of a web-based collaboration, communication, and file-sharing utility called Central Desktop. I found this program when my G-Mail account happened to have a news feed about it across the top of my inbox. We started using it immediately as an easier and more organized way of sharing files and since then we have begun taking advantage of many of its other features, especially...
This weekend, my social life has been great: I have spent nearly all my time with a friend named MySQL, who happens to be a database programming application. But on the serious side, SQL is an extremely powerful language for database creation. It is exciting to use, since as you learn more about it, the possibilities grow exponentially.Initially, I had trouble completing the software installation on my own. I called Bruce Hodge and he helped me get everything up and running. Once the the set-up was complete he helped me program in the database,...
Thursday, January 3, 2008
With us entering into a fresh New Year our team has decided to try some fresh new management. The way our InvenTeam has been set up is that one Project Manager oversees three Group Leaders who oversee the group members in their task specific groups. This system allows for easy communication and teamwork between people with similar tasks as well as easy flow of communication and information between the three groups.Jeff Pawlick, Juliana Wakeman, and...
When we arrived back from our Holiday Break yesterday we found an awesome gift sitting in our class room. Thank you Mr. Richard Blais and everyone at PLTW for your generous donation of these team shirts as well as your support of our InvenTeam. The polo shirts you donated to our team look great and we cannot wait to proudly sport them at MIT this June as well as at the RPI-Lemelson Award Ceremony next month. The shirts are awesome and we could not...
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
The soil drainage group is searching for new ways to measure soil drainage that we could incorporate into our project. Soil drainage is measured by variety of test presented in the gardening packet. We plan to include this as a automated process in our device. With the use of labview and moister detectors we can make the test more accurate and easi...
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Though the image is a little hard to see what you are looking at is Google Search results for "InvenTeam". Out of 3,050 results the Saratoga Springs HS InvenTeam Blog ranks number two, only behind the official InvenTeam web-site. Obviously we are drawing quite a bit of attention in the InvenTeams Universe and as we get closer to EurekaFest! and people start searching to find out whats going on, its pretty cool to know that were #1.This is a pretty...
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