Yesterday, InvenTeam members working on Aegis met with Tom Hays to discuss programming their prototype. Tom, a current Computer Science major at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, helped us map out the flow of our program. Once we get an updated and formal version of the program map, it will be much easier to contnue programming into the latter stages of the design process where the Java concepts get much more complicated. Tom also helped our group to fix on of the bugs we were having on Eclipse which was preventing us from previewing the code...
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Today, the InvenTeam members working on Aegis have almost finished coding the HTML for their home page. They are getting ready to launch the website and hopefully will be putting the Java code in at a later date so that our prototype is working correctly. Our group researched domain names for the website while Tom Corona continually worked on the Java functions. Tristan DeJesus kept on working on making laptop holders for the group so that they could sell them and purchase the rights to develop applications for Apple produc...
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
After months of research, it is very visible now that the members working on the college campus safety device, Aegis, are making tremendous headway. Tom Corona and Tristan Frey are coding the transition between the login page and the functions of the website. They are trying to make it so that when a user types in new or existing login information, the program executes script based on the inputs that it receives. Whether new or existing information, the login sequence is a daunting task. While they are working on the login, Chad Baker and myself...
Friday, December 11, 2009
Today, the InvenTeam members are working on Aegis are focusing on the HTML layout while Tom Corona and Tristan Frey continue to use Java to program the functions of their idea. Chad Baker and myself are working on getting a functionable website up and running that people can use to contact us before we implement the Java functions onto the website. Also, Mackenzie Knight and James Millar are working on finding materials that they can use to construct a prototype of the water recycling feature that they designed for the Shower Temperature Control...
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Today, Nick Florin and Chad Baker finished the final logo for the project. Also, the group fixed the problems they were having with Eclipse on the school computers and was able to continue programming the website. They are focusing some attention on HTML now in order to construct the outline of the websi...
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
The InvenTeam members at Saratoga Springs High School recently received news that they would be featured as one of the InvenTeams on MIT's website. I wrote and revised a statement about what our goals are for this year and we took another picture to display on their site.The Saratoga Springs High School InvenTeam will invent a cell phone application which will allow college students to alert campus security directly from their smartphones. Security...
Monday, November 30, 2009
On Wednesday, Tom Corona and Tristan Frey, members of the group working on Aegis, met with Tom Hays at the library to discuss problems the group was having in programming the Java code of their prototype. Tom helped them figure out the problems they were having reopening the projects in Eclipse on the school computers and gave them help with Persistence Manager Fact...
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
For those students in the introductory Project Lead the Way courses such as Introduction to Engineering and Design, Digital Electronics, Principles of Engineering, Computer Integrated Manufacturing, and Civil Engineering/Architecture, there is a new tutoring opportunity available. InvenTeam members in EDD are going to be tutoring these students throughout the year and can help with hands on projects, software, and can even help you to understand...
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Today, Patrick Foss and myself are preparing for a meeting with Maureen Duda, the coordinator for First Night in Saratoga Springs. Our InvenTeam plans to work with other local schools to put together a robotics demonstration during the event. Also, after group working on the college campus security device officially changed the name from The Guardian to Aegis, they began to research Remote Procedure Call which will hopefully being implemented into our progr...
Thursday, November 19, 2009
The new Project Lead the Way logo in Austin, Texas. While working on their projects, all InvenTeam members are preparing to participate in a tutoring program for Project Lead the Way students at the high school. All members will be required to complete 50 hours of tutoring, and this will hopefully increase the younger students' understanding of the material. Also, this will help prepare students for the rigors of the upper level Project Lead the...
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The InvenTeam met today with all the focus directed back at their individual projects. Our group working on the campus security system met and decided that they needed to switch the name from "The Guardian" to something else because we researched and realized that there was another security company with a very similar name. Also, the lead programmer, Tom Corona, was able to finish the log in page for the database controlled website. Programming in the future should be a lot easier from now on because the InvenTeam used some of the grant money...
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Yesterday, the InvenTeam members that travelled to Austin, Texas for the Project Lead the Way National Symposium arrived home. Overall, the trip was very eventful as Chad, Mackenzie, and myself met with many Project Lead the Way executives, teachers, and board members from other innovative companies. The night before the plane ride home, Saratoga Springs High School placed 3rd in the engineering competition. The objective was to make a children's...
Friday, November 13, 2009
The last two days here in Austin have been filled with presentations and demonstrations. There are about 800 people here from Project Lead the Way, and about 25 different schools. So far, our group has handed out about 200 brochures about the past successes of the InvenTeam at our High School to Project Lead the Way executives and members of other schools. Of the people that we have talked to, we have gotten about 75 to register for our blog and receive blog updates about what the Saratoga Springs InvenTeam is working on. Also, InvenTeam members...
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Today, Mr. Gallagher showed all the InvenTeam members the new Project Lead the Way logo that he had received in an email. I worked on taking the graphic of this logo and pasting it into Autodesk Inventor so that I can make a 3D logo along with the coaster that Mr. Gallagher had already made. Then, I put the logo and coaster cutout on a laser template in order to cut the coasters out and inscribe the logo into the wood of the coaster. We plan to...
Monday, November 9, 2009
Today is a very stressful day in the classroom as the InvenTeam is preparing for the trip to Austin. Even with the stress, some InvenTeam members found time to contribute to the tutoring program that was set up for Project Lead the Way students. Tristan DeJesus is working with freshman on their Introduction to Engineering & Design projects. In the meantime, Mackenzie Knight is working on creating a poster with every InvenTeam member's name, contact information, and picture on it to bring to Texas. Hopefully, people we meet in Austin will...
Thursday, November 5, 2009
With the Austin Trip only a week away, most of the groups have put aside their projects for time being to get ready for the Project Lead the Way symposium. Some InvenTeam members have finished up making brochures on Microsoft Publisher about the past InvenTeam projects that have received national recognition. They printed and folded 100 of these while other InvenTeam members worked on finishing up the Project Lead the Way posters that we are going to bring to Austin. We had a few problems with the printer so we had edit some of the posters and...
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Chris Carter sat and talked about his experiences with the Project Lead the Way program. He is currently working as a Civil Engineer.From the left: Nick Florin, Tom Corona, KC Bianco, Chad Baker, Tristan DeJesus, and Mackenzie Knight.Today, several members of the InvenTeam woke up early on a Saturday morning to come to the high-school to finish some things up to prepare for the Austin trip. We met with past Project Lead the Way student and R.P.I....
Monday, October 26, 2009
Today, our class worked on finishing up the rendered videos of all the InvenTeam members that we plan to take to Austin, Texas with us. Also, past Project Lead the Way students Tom Hayes and Juliana Wakeman stopped by so they can share their thoughts on the program. Both students, who are currently enrolled at W.P.I., talked about how Project Lead the Way has helped them decide what they want to do for the rest of their life and how it has helped them get a jump start on their careers. Also, Mr. Gallagher brought in the button-down shirts that...
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Today, a member of the group working on The Guardian, Chad Baker, announced that he has recieved a two-hundred dollar grant from Environmental Design Partnership located out of Clifton Park, New York. This money will go a long way for all six class projects which are for the most part, past the stages of research and looking to start purchasing materials to build their prototypes. Of the groups in this stage of the design process, the Wind Power Assistance Device group is looking to purchase materials to construct a wind tunnel to test wind resistance...
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
On Monday, October 19, the InvenTeam students working on The Guardian met in a coffee shop to discuss programming techniques with past InvenTeam Project Manager and current WPI student majoring in Computer Science, Tom Hayes. While there, the Saratogian stopped by and took pictures with the intentions of doing a story about the award Mr. Gallagher will be recieving in Austin, Texas as well as the trip that the InvenTeam members Chad Baker, Mackenzie...
Friday, October 16, 2009
Today, Mr. Gallagher informed us that he has decided to create the Invent Club at our high school. This will allow the InvenTeam members to stay at the school past 4 P.M. as well as allowing students to help out with the projects even if they are not in the Engineering Design and Development program. One of the first priorities of this new club is setting up the Project Lead the Way tutoring program that we want to do at the high school. Chad Baker has decided to take the lead on this project and is starting to create log sheets to ensure that...
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Our EDD class met for the first time this week on Wednesday because we had Monday off. Some members of the class are working hard on creating video-recorded interviews to show in Austin, Texas during the Project Lead the Way symposium while other students are working on putting together posters for other presentations. Even with the heavy workload from these assignments, the students are still making progress on their projects. For example, the Shower Temperature Control Unit’s group has begun to use CAD software to design a preliminary visual...
Friday, October 9, 2009
This week Mr. Gallagher presented us with some wonderful news: First Night of Saratoga is allowing us to do a presentation. We are currently working on this presentation - hopefully it will get our program and our ideas out to a much larger audience. Through the presentation we will hopefully garner more support for us from the community. We are very excited because we will likely be the only students presenting at First Night. We feel it is a great honor for them to let us get our ideas and program out to a broader audience. Patrick Foss and Tristan...
Friday, October 2, 2009
October 1, 2009The start of another year, and another EDD group to go with it. So far, 6 projects have been begun by different groups or individuals: the “Water Saving Sprinkler System,” by Ben Steer, the “Wind Power Assisstance Device,” by Gary, Elliot, and Colin, the “School Safe Speed System” by Ryan Bobbitt, the “Emergency Vehicle Alerter” by Pat and Eddy, the “Shower Temperature Control Unit” by James and Mackenzie, and “The Guardian,” by Tristan De Jesus, KC, Nick, Tristan Frey, Tom, and Chad.Each group is at slightly different stages of...
Friday, July 3, 2009
Overall our experiences at MIT over the 4 day period were extremely beneficial to our growth as engineers. It opened our eyes to the hard work, dedication, and motivation needed to succeed in today's competitive engineering environment. The opportunity to show off our own creation, along with the Invention to Venture workshop were both learning experiences as well as character building events. The trip truly broadened our scope on the world ahead of us, and hopefully next years team will be able to enjoy the same things we did this ye...
Saturday, June 27, 2009
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We were split up into 28 different groups for the design challenge. Our task was to construct an object that would convert wind energy into mechanical energy and raise a garbage can 30 feet into the air. We saw a plethora of ideas and in the end, about half were able to make it to the top.The ideas ranged from horizontal wind turbines to falling hammers. There seemed to be no trend in the most successful projects but the winner was a wide, large...
We joined fellow Inventeams at the Boston Museum of Science today. After watching a brief video about the creation of RockBand/designing we were pleased to see the rest of the amazing contributions to the Museum. Soon to follow is a competition that allows members of different teams to work together on the topic of wind pow...
Friday, June 26, 2009
We began our tours at the 2nd largest and one of the most prestigious wind tunnels next to NASA. Over 70 years old, the wind tunnel was originally ribbon cut by Orville Wright and draws so much power (over 3 mill watts) that they have to notify the local power companies and have a risk of shutting down the campus as they run the facility. Currently being tested was a more efficient wind power generating system although presently it was disabled....
Today we all woke up and attended the breakfast in the Baker House. We then signed up for two different tours the Wind Tunnel and one at the BROAD Institutue. At 9:00am we headed over to the Stata Center were Humera Fasihuddin once again lead us in the inspirational Advanced Invention to Venture section of Eureka Fest. We began the Invention to Venture class by learning tips and strategies as Humera, along with Eben Bayer, Gavin Mclntyre, Teresita...
Thursday, June 25, 2009
We woke up for breakfast around 6 o'clock in the morning then moved on to the Advanced Invention to Venture training with Humera Fasihuddin. The combination of interacting with renowned inventors and the elevator pitch activity was a good learning experience.Following lunch we moved into the Stata Center's auditorium for the InvenTeam and Student Prizes presentations at 1:30PM. The EcoFridge sparked our attentions and it really felt like there was a lot of potential for the system. Then at 6:00PM we set-up our stand and began to entertain every...
Arriving in Cambridge at about 7, we missed the welcome barbecue but were still able to get the tail end of the food. We then checked in, receiving name tags, t shirts, maps, bags, and water bottles.Mr. Gallagher then led us on a tour of the MIT campus, leading us to the "Dr. Suess-like" Stata Center. There we met the wonderful Leigh Estabrooks, the Lemelson-MIT Invention Education Officer. She told us about the Advanced Invention to Venture training being offered in the morning.It was beginning to get late and we returned to our rooms to study...
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
More 2009-2010 invent team members met to bring those who could not attend our last meeting up to speed. A vote was also taken to observe what other members might be interested in doing for this next year. As a team, we decided on five possible ideas, one being a continuation of the Garden Consultant with an extra feature focused on either research about PH effects or a feature that would allow sprinkler systems to eliminate the rain variable. Other proposals included safety concerns on college campuses, and safety concerns...
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Today a bunch of us from the 09-10 invent team met with members of the 08-09 team and discussed future plans. We went over what we need to accomplish, and the time constraints we have to do so. We began to narrow down proposal ideas, along with brainstorming ideas on how to raise money for our upcoming year in EDD. We talked to members of the 08-09 team and received information on how we can become successful and what we can do over the summer to help us have a successful and benificial ye...
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
As we're working, the final presentation is coming together nicely. The presentation is based on the Engineering Process, so we have a few short videos based on different steps in that process. Here is the first one, "Define the Problem".Thanks to Mr. Anthony Aquino, professional photographer, who helped us in preparing the final presentation. Mr. Aquino has done some excellent work, and you can check out his website at http://www.anthonyaquinophotography.com/More to come so...
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The last few weeks have been really busy, but we’re on the verge of releasing The Garden Consultant Online. We are working on cleaning up the code, and at the same time debugging and adding new content. The newer code is also allowing us to add new content much faster than previously. The site has gone through a lot of aesthetic changes in the past few days as well, and is looking very nice. The home page now has more content, including...
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Some of you may remember me from last school year but for those of you newer to following the Saratoga InvenTeam blog let me introduce myself. Last year 17 fellow students, Mr. Gallagher, and I applied for and were fortunate to receive a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam Grant from the Lemelson-MIT Program. All of us having been seniors, we ended our year with a passing of the torch to this years current InvenTeam as we prepared to head of to college in the coming Fall. Now as many of our Freshman years come to a close, some fellow graduates and I can't resist...
Monday, March 23, 2009
Hello once again, the inventeam has been busy the last few weeks and this is certainly the case with Dennis Florence the inventeam’s LabVIEW programmer. In last couple of weeks Dennis has been working with the Fishertech interface and using LabVIEW programming to control the various functions of the interface. Such as motors, switches, light sensors, proximity sensors, etc. Dennis has created a LabVIEW check interface program similar to the RoboPro check interface that runs the Fishertech interface. By doing this Dennis has taken a critical step...
Thursday, March 12, 2009
A lot has been accomplished in the last month. Progress worthy of note:A new plant matching algorithm- a program that takes the data users input from a certain zone (area to be analyzed by the garden consultant according to the user’s needs) and matches it with the plant database we have accumulated over the past two years to see if any plants in the database would grow in the zone the user has created with the conditions stated. This multiple zone functionality will make it easier for users to see what can grow in their gardens at home.Transition...
Friday, February 6, 2009
This week we changed our website from saratogainventeam.com to gardenconsultant.org we believe this is a more apt name for our website. The MySQL team was able to get the plant table for the database online and is currently putting in the characteristics table that is plant specific. The programming team has been working on removing any bugs that have appeared on the website and they are working on making the website more user friendly. The LabVIEW team has been working on incorporating the Sensor DAQ with the programs they have written. Every...
Monday, February 2, 2009
Over the last couple of weeks the MySQL team has been working on creating a strong plant table and through hard work and perseverance we have succeeded. The Garden Consultant website now has a fully functioning Plant Database. The Plant Database contains an extensive A-Z list of plants and multiple plant specific lists to aid the gardener in growing their plants.The Plant Database is basically completed but that does not mean we will stop working on it. The MySQL team will make sure to keep the Database constantly updated so as to insure that the...
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The video of last year's presentation at the MIT EurekaFest is now up on MIT TechTV. This represents the culmination of last year's work, and it's exciting to have it available to the public after so many requests. Watching the video has also been a source of inspiration for the current team. The team is re-energized, and has ambitions to produce even more for both local gardeners, and the worldwide horticulture industry. After a few months researching the technologies behind the Garden Consultant, we are ready to move into a new phase of development....
Friday, January 23, 2009
Over the past few days, we have been working on getting the data entry page to run smoother and have some cool features. One such feature is a drop-down menu in HTML which contains the names you've entered for different zones. We got this working in Perl, and then got rid of it to do it over again in AJAX. The Perl required refreshing the page to interface with the Database, whereas AJAX can communicate with the Database without refreshing or reloading the page. So now it only has a few more bugs to work out and it will be ready. It also adds...
Friday, January 16, 2009
We are almost ready for our presentation to Andrea Mann. We went through a long Power Point presentation for all the teams working on the Garden Consultant, as well as the teams doing independent projects in EDD. The website has a new background up which we think is very clean. The changing season background has been scrapped, as we decided that it looked too cluttered with it. The website is also now capable of inputting Zone Data to the website, with multiple zones for each user. Now we need to have the user be able to access all of his or her...
Monday, January 5, 2009
We have just gotten back from our two week holiday break today, and already have some exciting new ideas. We plan on using the Google Web Toolkit to give the website a very cool, smooth feel. Google Web Toolkit uses AJAX and has a lot of cool features that will also make the website faster. Check out some examples here: http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html In other news, we are approaching the presentation date for Andrea Mann. All of the groups will have their own video similar to the one showed below for the Perl Team. This video...
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