The Kan Jam tournament, which raised money for our EDD project fund, was a huge success. With around 40 participants, the tournament raised well over $200! Everybody there had a great time.There will likely be similar events in the futu...
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
This week, we will continue assembly of our new 3D-printer. This printer will be used to make specialty parts for our class's 3D printer and used as a benchmark against our custom made 3D printer. These 3d printers will benefit our school for several years, as some students will be able to bring their 3D models to life....
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Last week, the Self-Contained Cooling group received most of the parts necessary to build a prototype. Now with a pump, a radiator, tubing, coolant, and a competing product against which to test, we are ready to send our base designs out to be manufactured. While we wait for our part to be printed, we will work on assembling all other parts to fit standard computer cas...
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Recently, all of the EDD students have been greatly helping out the community; with an emphasis on aiding the younger PLTW students in their engineering problems. Volunteering is not only a great way to say thanks to the community for their support, but also lets the EDD students communicate with the younger PLTW students, bringing the whole program together. There is a deadline for each student to have 5 hours of volunteer work completed by Friday....
Thursday, December 1, 2011
In addition to the other fundraising activities we are currently working on, a new one is in progress. Yesterday, after school a couple of students met and discussed this new project with Mr. Gallagher. The idea is to order small wooden puzzles like the one shown above from the company Puzzled, Inc. After we receive the puzzles we plan to reverse engineer them on AutoDesk Inventor and sell the pieces of the puzzles to other schools around the country...
In the upcoming weeks, EDD students will be presenting their work to Mr. Gallagher. This work includes all the research that they have done, any drawings or model's they've made, and what they have made for presentations. This information should be kept in the student's engineering notebook, which will be examined during the meeting. Students will also have a list of goals that they want to complete by the next progress meeting. These meetings will...
Sunday, November 27, 2011
On Tuesday November 22, Allie Lehane, Aaron Batker Pritzker, Sam Hyatt, and Casey Kerr presented the purpose of Project Lead the Way, our school's past achievements, our current projects, and our contribution to the community of Saratoga Springs to a group of four engineers from Bechtel Corporation. Part of an effort to raise money for the class, the presentation prompted many questions from the audience about our design process, what we have learned,...
Friday, November 18, 2011
This past week, we gave presentations in class addressing the estimated final costs of our projects. Based on what was presented, we need to continue to raise money so we have sufficient funds to complete everything by the end of the year. The EDD Class recently recieved a grant from Youth2 for $500. We also held a bake sale in school yesterday where we were able to raise $134.60. In addition, we are holding a Kan-Jam tournament in December. We hope...
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Tom Corona, the lead programmer in the campus security project 2 years ago, is meeting with the current students working of the campus security project, over the upcoming break. Tom will help the students understand how the code works, and help them organize it. Tom, being a self taught programmer, will also share some of his experience and advice to further inform this year's EDD studen...
Monday, November 14, 2011
The 3-D printer group gave a presentation in class about the positives and negatives of buying a complete kit or starting from scratch. The decision was narrowed down in deciding between the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic and the Reprap Mendel. A second presentation will be given next class in further detail of each model's printing specifications, tolerance and quality of printing, and of consumer revie...
Saturday, November 12, 2011
When last you heard about the Self-Contained Submersion Cooling project, it was a fantasy existing only in my own mind. Now two months into the class, team leader Joshua Nixon and members Aaron Batker Pritzker, Alex Gailor, John Howe, and George Kaplan are making that dream a reality. With two main objectives in mind, to minimize turbulence in the flowing liquid and to maximize the area of contact between the processor and coolant, we created two...
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Today, a group of representatives from Project Lead The Way came in for an overview of what we've been working on over the past two months. A small group of students; composed of Allie Lehane, Aaron Batker Pritzker, Sam Hyatt, and Casey Kerr, presented to them. They showed a PowerPoint which summarized some our school's past EDD projects, our current projects, and what extra things our group is planning on doing to help the community.The presentation...
Monday, November 7, 2011
With the final group members picked for each project, everyone is excited to start working with their new teams! As a class we decided to narrow down our projects to just three. The three projects we chose are the 3D printer, the computer cooling and the campus security app formerly known as "Aegis." Today, we were proud to come up with the official name for the campus security app. It will now be called, "Ally Campus Security." While it would seem...
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Yesterday, we were presented with a new and fresh idea in class. The idea would be to create our own 3D printer. After researching and finding out what is already out there on the market, we found all kinds of 3D printers ranging from highly intricate designs at $20,000 to basic DIY 3D printers at $1,500.One specific 3D printer, on the more affordable side, that interested us was called the MakerBot. It is essentially a machine that can produce a...
On November 17, 2011, 14 days away as ofposting, there will be a bake sale. All proceeds will fund this year’s EDDprojects, including the computer cooling project, and the campus security project.All items, including cookies, brownies, and muffins, will be baked and donatedby members of the EDD class for a reasonable price....
Monday, October 31, 2011
Our Blue Light Security group is brainstorming new names for their system, Aegis. The logo depicted above is the original design created by Nick Florin and Chad Baker, members of the 2009 EDD class. Other security systems have since used the term Aegis and we are looking to make our system unique. Some of the new names being considered include: Secure U, Safe U, and Alert U. Vote for your favorite as well as suggest new names.Also in the spirit...
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
After refurbishing the powerpoint for Bechtel, our 4 presenters practiced their routine in front of the class one more time. Following were a few side comments from the class. Their final presentation is next week.Our groups for our 4 different projects assembled at the end of the presentation, moving towards our class goals.-Sh...
Monday, October 24, 2011
During today's class, 4 of our peers practiced a powerpoint for next week. The powerpoint is intended to be presented in front of professional engineering firms, such as Bechtel, requesting funding for our projects. The presentation was critically evalutated and is going to be re-done next class. -Sh...
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Dear Reader, Each of our four groups created powerpoints over the past week and today we presented them in front of the class. This took a good hour and we still ran out of time! Everyone was involved in the class discussions and I feel as if we got a lot accomplished; learning more about each topic and individually we were constantly weeding out ideas and keeping track of the good ones. These discussions about which final projects to implement will continue next class. Stay tuned! ...
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Dear Reader,The first few weeks of class we have been brainstorming, where as a class,we cut down our ideas into the four described below.Originally, we each started with our own ideas that we pitched to the PLTWteachers during the last school year. Over the summer, each individualposted their ideas on the blog that are also included below. As this schoolyear started, we each explained our ideas to the class so we couldunderstand the problem statements better.To help develop these ideas, each student did further research on one of thegiven problems...
- Redesign of Crutches -Task: Reduce or completely remove irritation of underarms from use. -Other designs: Wheel chair, knee scooter, spring-loaded armpit rest, cane. -Needs to be cheap and easy to use.- Submersive Cooling System -Market: For computer users at home that pay more for increased processor speed. -Ex. Photographer, Web designer, programmer, ect. -Non-conductive fluid where the computer is completely submerged. -Could be a consumer's option or could be included in the system. -Gets rid of copper from existing systems, reducing the...
Monday, June 20, 2011
In recent years bullying has become more prevalent and a wide spread concern. Specifically, bullying in schools has gained national attention. I have recently been a witness to bullying in our school cafeteria. Surveillance cameras are set up in schools to assist in capturing activity. The cameras in the majority of schools are scanning cameras that move at a predetermined rate. In the incident I witnessed, the camera was scanned away as the bullying...
Especially this time of year, gardening can been seen as a hassle to most, if not all people. First, one must create holes in the ground where they would like the plant to go. Then one must actually plant the plant, get the hose or the watering can to water the plant, cover the plant back up again, and all of these steps aren't even including the optional step of fertilizing the plant. All of this is essentially inefficient, because one must be bending...
Many elderly people develop health problems as they grow older and luckily doctors and specialists have developed pills to help ease the pain and make some of their symptoms go away. The average senior citizen takes at least 7 pills a day, if not more and must take them to function pain free on a daily basis. However, along with old age comes forgetfulness and therefore it becomes difficult to remember when to take their pills, what pill to take,...
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Many Schools and business are equipped with SMART board and interactive white board technologies. Such Technologies are very large, on average of 12 sguare feet, and take up much wall space. They can cover wall, chalk board, white board, bulletin board, or even in some cases window space. The space could be used if the board wasn't a hindrance and could move. Sense they are built stationary and cannot move, the also have a narrowed view ang...
Today most all alarm clocks use only sound to wake somebody up, and those that do use light do it ineffectively. Many people wake up well to strong light, and the clcoks that do exist are far too dim.
note: after I proposed a solution to this google@home was announced at Google IO and it looks like it will basically solve this eventually using the android platform and api, so I would rather solve this problem, or another. Many electronics today use electricity even when they are are not functioning, you can fix this by using a power strip and turning...
Everyday physically impaired children are faced with limitations in their lives. Particularly in playground settings where you do not see many handicapped accessible items and if you do, these items can sometimes be expensive or hard to install. My idea would be to provide children with a handicapped accessible, durable, safe and most importantly cost efficient swing for children to rid...
In today's portable devices, memory storage is often an issue and almost always a central feature. The main problems with our current memory systems are excessive use of power, lack of capacity, ease of use, and speed. There are already several methods by which portable memory is stored, but none of them fulfill all of these criteria to a satisfactory degr...
Saturday, June 18, 2011
One of the main problems with the car key fob, I believe, is the panic button. The panic button is used to activate the car's alarm when you are in a crisis situation. On almost all key fobs the panic button is a red button with word "panic" written on it. It works by simply transmitting a radio frequency to a receiver in the car. Once the radio signal is received, the car alarm is triggered. It is a pretty straightforward system, but it has a major...
The average American neglects to turn off their water supply valves after doing their laundry. By leaving the water supply open, the washing machine hoses are subject to a constant pressure of 80 pounds per inch. This much pressure can easily rupture the hose, especially if its an older model. A rupture can lead to 60 gallons of water on your floor in one hour, and upwards of $5,000 in damages. This increases if your machine isn't on the basement...
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Heat is a computer’s worst enemy. In every component, buildup of heat causes the kind of excess noise, unreliability, and performance bottlenecks that have plagued the personal and enterprise computing industries for years. The devastating effect of heat on computer components can be most easily felt when a part fails from overheating. According to researchers at Intel, “increasing HDD [hard disk drive] temperature by 5°C has the same effect on...
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
In all communities street lamps waste incredible amounts of energy when no one is on the street to benefit from the expended light. Street lamps are essential for safety and many states and countries have laws requiring minimum amounts of light. The major problem is protecting not only the people affected by street lamps but the environments and resources affected as we...
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
When driving a nice new car there is a good chance there is some sort of touchscreen or big display in the dash providing you entertainment. It can play music, check weather, get sport scores or give directions. Now lets shift the train of thought. If you buy even a top of the line motorboat there isn't an option for anything like this. The closest you get is a nice radio that might be able to play your ipod. It takes a lot less focus to drive a boat then a car so it makes sense to me to have a nice interactive way to provide the same kind of entertainment...
Monday, June 13, 2011
My problem: Radio stations aren’t ideal. Everybody that has ever listened to the radio knows the frustration of not being able to find a station, song, or artist that they want to listen to. Also, when you travel out of the area, all of the radio stations are different than what you are used to. This makes it impossible to listen to the stations that you generally listen ...
Last Thursday, the 2011 EDD class gave a series of presentations of the year’s work to a panel of local engineers. I attended this event to get a better understanding of the class, as well as to see what is in store for me next year. Overall, I thought the presentations were very professional. All three groups were clear in their explanations of their individual design processes from idea to finished product, and they answered most of the panel’s questions without a hitch. I especially enjoyed the demonstration of the ICCI, as well as viewing...
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
I attended the EDD presentation last night, and I was very impressed by what I saw and what I heard. Everything that the students said last night were organized and well planned. It was obvious to me that these students knew their subject material well. As the various engineers that came last night asked the students detailed questions about their projects, I feel that they answered the questions thoroughlyI was especially impressed with the ICCI group, as they explained the various ways that they did the testing of the materials to really prove...
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Yesterday during class we had our last Skype meeting with Ellen Dickenson. We presented her with a PowerPoint presentation about the progress we have made throughout this month. Afterward we demoed our prototypes to give her a visual of what we've accomplished. We concluded the meeting with her feedback. Moving forward, we are preparing for our final presentations that should take place in front of local engineers in the beginning of June. As the year is coming to an end we are working hard to accomplish our final goals to hopefully find succe...
Friday, May 6, 2011
Wednesday afternoon we went to the Greenberg Child Care Center at Skidmore College to test our prototype. This was the first time we observed how children interact with our product. We had a very successful demonstration using a game called Backyard Baseball. The kids really enjoyed using the puck. They played with the system for about two hours and the puck proved to be durable and functional. We plan to make another visit within the next few weeks. After this visit we have discovered some improvements that can be made. For instance,...
Monday, April 25, 2011
After returning from our spring break, we have returned with new and exciting technology. Sean has assembled our new PCB. It condenses our previous board into a new one that is only four square inches. It contains all we need in our interface device. Below you can see our old board compared to our new one. Also included is our new and updated interface device with LEDs that light up when the device is clicked. Moving forward, Sean will be posting...
Friday, April 1, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Our third prototype of the interface device (the puck) is almost complete. It will be glued together tomorrow. It has many improvements over the previous devices including bright white plastic that allows you to better see the cursor and projected image and many colored LED's that flash when the device is "clicked." These LED's around the edge of the puck will make the device more interactive and allow children or anyone who is using the device to...
Monday, March 21, 2011
ICCI
Last week, we received our aluminum tubing and connectors that we ordered to build our projector mounting system. We are using push-lock connectors to attach the 6 foot tubes. We had to cut and drill holes to make the tubing fit together. The system is 6'x6'x6 with a beam across the top to mount the projector and WiiMote on. Sean and Issac are also working on completing a third interface prototype using the new bright white acrylic....
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Yesterday during our class period, Ellen Dickenson from the Lemelson-MIT Foundation visited our school. We presented her our projects, volunteer work, and fundraising progress beginning from the start of our year to what we wish to accomplish by school year's end. In addition to Ellen, we also had Mr. Piccirillo there to observe the presentation. Mr. Piccirillo is the Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Education for our school district. The presentation went extremely well, as we have accomplished a great deal over the last...
Monday, February 28, 2011
Here is a small report on the different parts of all the projects I've been working on since December. ICCI This is my main group, and I've done several things for it. My main achievement is puck circuit 2.0. Using what I learned from building the previous circuit, I improved the design of the 2.0 circuit. The circuit itself is more compact, allowing an extra battery to be included. Along with moving the heat spreader, the circuit had some small layout changes to improve the design. On the software side, I modified the mouse control...
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Prior to the InvenTeam going on Winter Recess this coming week, we decided to create and present an initial elevator pitch for each project. An elevator pitch is a short explanation or description of a project or invention, usually focusing on its market value or advantage over current products. The idea is that the project can be explained in under two minutes (the average time of an elevator ride). Elevator pitches are often used by entrepreneurs to explain an idea to investors in order to receive funding.
Following is an elevator pitch for...
Monday, February 14, 2011
On Friday Jill, Sean, and I met with Nancy Wheeler from the Greenberg Child Care Center at Skidmore College. We presented our project to her in hopes of testing our system prototype there. She told us what she thought of our project and gave us ideas and suggestions on how to improve it. She also told us about how they currently use computers and showed us around the facility.
She was very interested in having us test our system there and we...
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
On Thursday, we had our Mid-Year skype conference with Ellen Dickenson. We gave her a PowerPoint presentation on our current progress, goals, and community service progress. She gave us comments and suggestions on our projects and business proposals.
We also found out that Ellen and others from the Lemelson-MIT Foundation will be visiting our school on March 9th. We will be doing a presentation for them and attending a Lemelson-MIT Foundation scholarship presentation that night at RPI as well. We plan to accomplish a lot in the next...
This video shows how this system can be used with computer games that currently exist. In the video you can see Joey playing Backyard Baseball, a computer game from 1997. Of course in our system the puck will be used on the ground not help up in the air, but for visibility purposes we chose to present it this way. ...
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Over the past couple weeks we have been working on finishing our prototype consisting of four plants, a dehumidifier, and a distribution system. It uses gravity to move the collected water from the dehumidifier to the four surrounding plants. Our end goal is to supply the plants with water drawn from the air through use of a dehumidifier and channel any excess water away from the system. Our next step in the process is to purchase the three other...
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
Throughout the last several months our group has gone through various transitions with respect to the market which our project will be applied. Starting off strictly as a boat misting system, our project has now evolved into accommodating several applications, as we are now marketing ourselves as a portable misting system. With this concept in mind we have brainstormed a few general applications, deciding for now to focus specifically on golf carts. We feel golf carts have a much deeper market potential as golf seasons are often cut short by...
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
The InvenTeam is now back from holiday vacation, and have been making significant progress on our projects. The Intelligent Child Computer Interface Device group is near completion on the interface device, and the other groups are continuing to progress in their prototyping.
Here Isaac and Sean give an overview of the ICCI group's interface device.
The Prototype
Sean working on the Prototyp...
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