Yesterday after school we asked all the project lead the way students in the junior class who are interested in being involved in EDD next year to stop by for a quick meeting. A few people from each group gave a presentation of what they were working on and their future goals. This gave the juniors an idea of what goes on in class. We shared our fundraising ideas and showed them our Togatilt website. We also gave them opportunities to assist us with our projects and in fundraising. All of them seemed very interested and hopefully they all contact...
Friday, December 17, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Thinking how to make our misting system better developed for the consumer, we decided to implement a circuit which adjusts the amount of mist that the pump outputs. The circuit was small and fairly inexpensive as it had to be soldered together, however should easily fit in our housing unit. It works by controlling the motor speed through pulse-width modulation, regulating a series of pulses from the battery to the pump. Below is the circuit's front...
Monday, December 6, 2010
We are excited to announce the launch of our new fundraising website and brand: TogaTilt
Visit us at:www.togatilt.com
The New Logo
About TogaTilt:Based out of Saratoga Springs High School, TogaTilt is a website which allows for local students enlisted in the Project Lead the Way program to further pursue their interests in engineering. TogaTilt was created to provide an outside source of revenue for students in the capstone class, Engineering...
Friday, December 3, 2010
Today during class we had our monthly Skype meeting with Ellen Dickenson. We gave her a PowerPoint presentation on our current progress, our future goals, our community service plan, and our fundraising ideas. Overall, we had good feedback and suggestions. Unfortunately our meeting was cut short so she could not finish her comments. She plans to contact us with more questions so that we can take her feedback into account and improve each of our projects. Hopefully we can make even more progress and achieve each of our goals as the month continues!...
Monday, November 29, 2010
Team boat mister begins testing on one of their two initial prototypes. Shown below is the 3/8" tubing system with brass compression misting nozzle unions. A fine enough mist is being produced where if you hold your hand a foot or more away from the nozzles, no water condenses on your hand.
From here we plan to complete construction of our second prototype which utilizes push-lock unions and 1/4" line. Also, we plan on completing the design of the housing unit which will hold the pump, battery and various tubing connections....
Monday, November 22, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
We are currently designing an efficient way to mount a large projector within our tent. Some constraints we have considered are making the mount easy to assemble and disassemble, suspending the projector securely, and ensuring that our tent can support all of the equipment we are placing inside of it.After taking all of these factors into account, we have decided to order two six foot steel bars that will run across the top of the tent providing...
Friday, November 12, 2010
Over the course of this month we have made a great deal of progress:
Currently, Team ICCI is working on three different interfaces for their system. Isaac is creating a mouse that functions by clicking, Joe is designing a mouse that performs only mousing, and Sean is developing a mouse that can do both. Sean is also modifying the existing software we are using so that it works with a multi-point device rather than a single-point device.
Team Boat Mister is solving one problem at a time. They have visited a marina and determined their...
On November 5th, Alex and Max went to the Saratoga Boat Works Marina to look at a variety of boats where our project may be applied. We were able to photograph and observe the various types of boats and how their designs will affect our project.
From there we decided to go to Allerdice, a local hardware store where we talked with a representative about water pumps. The store itself did not carry the specialized high pressure pump we require, however...
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Upon entering this team, we decided that each of us would strive to obtain at least 40 hours of community service over the course of the year. Our response to aid and guidance that we have received.Currently we have initiated a tutoring schedule, in which the members of the Inven Team will be staying after school each day to help out fellow students in corresponding Project Lead the Way courses. Our goal is to be able to have at least one EDD member...
Over the last few weeks, I have been working on getting the new InvenTeam fundraising site ready to launch. It will allow people to buy different products that we make such as acrylic laptop stands that we make out of acrylic plastic sheets using our laser cutter and a strip bender. Last years InvenTeam sold them as a fundraiser and it was very successful. It should be ready to launch at the end of this week. We hope that this will generate more...
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Our team, consisting of David Martuscello, Brooke Ruggiero, and Ian Kettlewell, made a trip to Dehn's Flowers on Beekman Street. Our intent was to discuss the possibility of using wicks to water plant soil, and to discuss which plants would grow well in an indoor environment. We were able to have a discussion with John of Dehn's Flowers. He introduced us to the Aqua mat, a material which seeps water to soil through the process of passive hydroponics....
Monday, October 25, 2010
The Saratoga Springs High School Inventeam wanted to congratulate the Inventeam students from Cesar Chavez High School in Laveen, Arizona and Oak Ridge High School in Tennesse. These students were given the amazing opportunity of presenting their accomplishments at a White House Science Fair. The fair celebrates the winners of a broad range of science, technology, engineering, and math. President Obama noted, “If you win the NCAA championship, you come to the While House. Well, if you’re a young person and you produce the best experiment or design,...
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Dehumidifier:In the Dehumidification System Project we have been working with the Lab View program for programming our system. This will take inputs from the sensors such as water level, humidity and soil moisture and use that information to alter the system accordingly. The main problem that we will face in the coming months is to find a balance between water in the plant, moisture in the air, water in the reservoir and being able to adjust for various plant types.
Boat Mister:Over the past few classes, the Boat Mister group has compiled various...
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Today, the ICCI group received our pocket projector that we plan to use in our final prototype. It is about as big as a cell phone, and projects up to 120''. We hooked it up to the computer, projected it on the ground, and we were able to write with our IR pen easily. Below, you can see us "writing" on the floor tiles. Above you can see our projector compared to a cell phone....
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Today was a very successful day for our group. We managed to connect a Wii remote to a laptop successfully. Also, we created a small infrared LED " light pen" that emits IR light that the Wii remote can see. When calibrated correctly, our light pen can be used as a traditional computer mouse (see video below). This technology has been developed by Johnny Chung Lee, and he has posted all his work on his website for anyone to use. Using this simple technology, we believe that we can open up a world of possibilities. Currently we are exploring possibilities...
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Earlier this week we created a plaque for the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, or the NYSCOPBA, to raise funds for our class. To create this plaque we used our laser cutter in class to engrave their logo onto a square sheet of acrylic plastic. This plaque will be mounted on the front of their new podium. You can see the completed work above. Special thanks to the NYSCOP...
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
On Thursday, The Saratoga InvenTeam chose what projects we are going to move forward with. We narrowed down the number of projects from five to three. We decided what three ideas that we wanted to move forward with and work on. We then divided up into groups based on who is working on each project. Logan, Issac, Jill, John, Joe, and Sean will be working on the Intelligent Child Computer Interface. Max, Dylan, Alex, and Jake are working on a Boat Mister system. Ian, David, and Brook are in the third group working on a Mold Remediation System....
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
In class today, the InvenTeam had a skype conference call with Ellen Dickenson. She is the Invention Education Associate for the The Lemelson-MIT Program. The presentation went extremely well and afterwards she proceeded to ask us questions about each of our ideas. Concluding the meeting she gave us feedback on her thoughts and gave us guidance to further improve our research. Overall, this helped us to shape our ideas, and thoughts about our proposed innovatio...
Friday, September 17, 2010
Today, the 2010-11 InvenTeam had our first presentation for several superintendents from around the state. There were many school administrators, as well as our school principals in attendance. Overall, the presentation went very well. We presented our product ideas for the 2010-11 school year. We only learned about this presentation yesterday afternoon, and had to quickly collaborate and prepare a presentation. From this experience, we learned how to improve on presenting our ideas. We received some feedback on how to improve our presentation....
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
This coming Monday, we will be giving our final presentation to a group of local engineers. Aegis is complete, and now we are just working on perfecting our presentation and getting all the little bugs out of the program. We only have five days of school left in our senior year, and everybody is very excited to show off all the work we have done since the first day of class. We have the final design done for the trophies that MIT asked us to make, and we are now printing out sixteen of them for the different InvenTeams that are being recognized...
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
The School Board presentation was a great success! All of the InvenTeam members presenting did a great job. After showing screen shots of how to create a student account to use Aegis, Tom Corona directed KC Bianco outside to test the application. KC walked outside and immediately clicked the button. A few seconds later, the alert popped up on the screen in front of the whole auditorium. It placed KC exactly where he was standing, and we zoomed in to show that it showed him standing a few feet outside the courtyard door. Then Tom hovered over the...
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The pressure of being the first students to present to the school board in two years is not getting to our team in the least bit. We have finalized our powerpoint and scripts and have even included screen shots on how to set up a student account on the Aegis website. After that, we plan to demonstrate how the revolutionary system works by pressing the alert button and show the program finding our access location and placing it on the map. We have been thoroughly practicing the presentation, and even gave it to one of the freshman Design and...
Friday, May 21, 2010
With the School Board presentation coming up, Tom Corona decided to bring Tristan Frey's laptop with him to Long Island. Tom should be able to complete debugging the program so we can demonstrate Aegis in front of the entire School Board. We are extremely excited to have this honor and to show the board that investing in Project Lead the Way is paying off. We all plan to share where we are attending school next year and what we are majoring in. They need to know that the PLTW program has had a tremendous influence on our future plans and our...
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
The end of the year is quickly approaching, and the school board has asked our EDD class to put together a presentation in front of our parents, the school board, and the press about why we were invited to Austin, Texas. We plan to include the past projects such as the Garden Consultant and the Cell-Phone Car Starter. We are also going to demonstrate Aegis and show how it can grab the victim's GPS location and send it to security.On a sidenote, Dennis Conway, who is in charge of campus security at Skidmore, recently got back to us regarding us...
Saturday, May 8, 2010
After a long day at Capital Hill, Mr. Gallagher took John Otto and I to the Smithsonian Museum of US History. There were plenty of interesting things to see at this museum. One of the things that I enjoyed the most was the section dedicated to Jerome Lemelson, the same man who started the InvenTeam organization that we are a member of. Other interesting exhibits included the evolution of products like the light bulb and the steam engine. We also...
Today was a busy day at Capital Hill. John Otto, Mr. Gallagher, and myself spent the day in eight different meetings. The purpose of the trip was to lobby in front of Congressmen and Senators' staff to try and convince them to provide more funding for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematical. This STEM education is specifically supported by programs like Project Lead the Way who would be able to grow even more rapidly with government...
Friday, April 23, 2010
Yesterday, we began working on the final touches for Aegis that should take a week maximum. I worked on styling the different pages while Tom Corona worked on making the picture that students upload appear on the campus security's screen. Once we finish this, Aegis will be complete and we plan to present to some universities. We are trying to communicate with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The InvenTeam met with Professor Lester Rubenfield two years ago and this year's InvenTeam is trying to arrange a meeting/presentation with him as well....
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
A few days ago we completed all the major coding for our program. This means everything runs properly and is ready to have small additions of code added on for debugging and enhancements. Next, we have to set up our own servers, and finish writing instructions for Colleges to make their own accounts. This was a big step for Team Aegis and were looking forward to field testing and fine tuni...
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
We have decided to allow Colleges to run, debug, and launch our program independently and create their own Administration settings by themselves rather than us creating it for them. This will allow Colleges to view active victims and change our program to their liking rather than us having to view everybodys data. This will require a few extra pages in the program for Administration registration and a detailed instruction sheet on how to accomplish th...
Friday, March 19, 2010
Today, Tom Corona continues to get Aegis ready for its final touches. He is currently going through the whole program and debugging it. He is looking for errors on each specific line instead of the whole program itself. This way, he can identify the specific problem and solve it. Also, the rest of the team finished up the letters that they are emailing and mailing to all the Project Lead the Way affiliate schools. These letters are planned to be mailed out in the next few weeks when the project is finish...
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Today, while Tom Corona and Tristan de Jesús worked on allowing students to save their profile information and writing the script for the picture identification to appear when a distress signal is received, the rest of the group worked on writing a letter that will be sent to Project Lead the Way affiliate colleges and universities. We are allowing Aegis to be an open source project available to any Project Lead the Way college and are making the script available to them to see as well as make changes ...
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Yesterday, the InvenTeam members working on Aegis tested out the application on their smartphones. The signals are being sent to the website correctly, however some coordinates are a little bit off. This may be because of the weak Wi-Fi connections at the school. We are currently working on taking these coordinates and placing them on a visible mapwidget on the website as well as placing the login and signup features on the HTML pa...
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Over the past week, I have been meeting with former EDD student and current Worcester Poly-tech undergrad Tom Hays to discuss the remaining programming. We debugged our existing program as well as our program editor Eclipse. We also were able to accomplish writing much of the remaining script, and hope to have a all sides of the program working together in April. After we have the necessary functions of the program working correctly, we can add other minor details, streamline and debug the rest of the code, and also make our site and program more...
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Today, Chad Baker and myself finished the HTML for the website. All we have to do now is put the comment box on the website and we will be handing over the HTML code to Tom Corona. Tom is working with queries today that verify login account information such as passwords and college ID's. We are close to putting all the pieces together and seeing the login functions of the website appear on the HTML pages and direct the user to different pages based on whether or not the account information is correct. We also have InvenTeam members working...
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Today, the InvenTeam members working on Aegis just about finished the Contact Us page on their website and will soon be handing over the HTML code to Tom Corona to incorporate with the Java. This will allow us to have the login and sign up features of the service on the website in addition to the security features. Tom is still working on the complicated UI Binder and is making heavy progress. After the UI Binder is done, and the HTML code is combined with the Java, we will be putting all our efforts into completing the database functions that...
Friday, February 26, 2010
Yesterday, team Aegis finalized their homepage design in HTML and CSS and are waiting on Tom Corona to put the finishing touches on the Java to allow the page to contain the Login and Sign Up boxes. Tom is using a feature called UI Binder, which allows him to combine the Java with the HTML code and put them onto the same web page. The InvenTeam also worked on coming up with the final layout for the future design of the website. In other words, they clearly laid out how all the pages will interact with each other and what pages different user...
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Aegis is a website that has a phone side and a security side. It is designed so that when college students are in danger, they can visit the website which will automatically direct them to the phone side. They can easily click the "Alert" button which will send the student's GPS location to the security side of the website and place them on a a map. Along with the GPS coordinates, security will also get a picture of the student and important information that will help them to safely find the student. Aegis eliminates the need for the Blue Light...
The Shower Temperature Control unit is a device that can digitally control the temperature of your shower. The digital control has options for preset temperatures that allow the user to easily select favorable temperatures. In addition to a digital temperature control, the unit will cycle water back through the system while the shower is warming up to the desired temperature. This will eliminate water wasted while the shower is warming up to a temperature that the user wan...
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
The meeting today with Project Lead the Way founder Richard Leibich and Congressman Scott Murphy went very well. The InvenTeam members working on Aegis were able to present their idea and explained how they thought that using smart phones can help eliminate crimes committed on college campuses. Nick Florin, Chad Baker, Tristan Frey, KC Bianco, Tom Corona, and Tristan De Jesus led the way as they were the first group to present. Next, Mackenzie Knight and James Millar presented their idea of the Shower Temperature Control Unit and displayed the...
Thursday, February 4, 2010
The InvenTeam has been rigorously preparing for a visitation by New York State Congressman Scott Murphy and Project Lead the Way executives. Along with these guests, Richard Liebich, the founder of Project Lead the Way, is coming in to see what the students in the Engineering Design and Development class are working on. All groups have prepared presentations about their projects and group Aegis has divided up their group to prepare for this meeting on Friday, February 4th. While we are getting our presentation ready, Tom Corona is continually...
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
On Friday, a local business woman Andrea Mann visited our EDD class along with representatives from Project Lead the Way and Rochester Institute of Technology. Andrea, who has been involved with InvenTeam students over the past few years, helped Saratoga Springs High School be certified once again in order to give college credit for their final exams. Group Aegis met and talked with the representatives from Rochester Institute of Technology and explained their idea and how they thought it would benefit college campuses across the nati...
Today, Mr. Gallagher came up with a new idea for us to work on in terms of getting the word out about Aegis Campus Security and the laptop holders we are trying to sell to raise money. We are going to usethe RoboCell scripts that we created for a Tic Tac Toe robot last year in Computer Integrated Manufacturing to create an interactive Tic Tac Toe game/video on YouTube. We will have to record every different situation and put them together according to the scripts that we have saved from last year. KC Bianco is leading the way for the Tic Tac...
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Today, most of team “Aegis” continued working with Remote Procedure Call (RPC). We have been chatting with Tom Hayes via Email to help clear up our questions on this extensive topic. Although we have recently been having problems with this topic, it seems that by our next class meeting the team will have a firm grasp on its criteria. Tom, Tristan, Tristan, Nick, and Chad have been working very hard researching code and plan to continue with programming next class. Meanwhile, KC Bianco has been making tremendous progress on our presentation. He...
Monday, January 11, 2010
Over the past few days, team “Aegis” has accomplished a lot. On Sunday, Nick Florin and Tom Corona met with Tom Hayes before his departure back to WPI. They continued work on programming and fixed the phone side of the application for android phones. The phone side of the application has simply an “alert” button and no website navigation. This is because we want to make it easy/quick for the student to access campus security.The team is now working on planning the “log in” and “sign up” pages for our website. Today, Tristan De Jesús along with...
Thursday, January 7, 2010
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Tuesday, January 5, 2010
After the long break, the InvenTeam members working on Aegis have been putting everything they have been researching with Tom Hays to work. Myself and Chad Baker have been able to transfer all the HTML files from Notepad++ to Eclipse in order to compile it with the Java files. We created the "Alert" button and are working on the functions that the button will perform. In addition, we were able to use User Agent Checking so that the website will direct the user to one page if they are accessing it on their mobile phone, or another page if they...
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