Apologies for the late post, it has been a crazy week with our project and the July 4 holiday!

Last Friday, we chose 3 different designs and began prototyping. We made low-fidelity prototypes of each design, shown below.

The first design consists of a wall-mounted clock-like interface that contains a gradient meter that changes colors according to the sound level (for example, green would indicate a safe sound level, yellow would indicate that the sound level is approaching an unsafe level, and red would mean an unsafe sound level). Also, a logo of earmuffs would flash white light when the sound level is unsafe.

The second design is a box that hangs from the ceiling and points light directly at OEDK worktables. The third design also hangs from the ceiling, although it is shaped like earmuffs and shines light in all directions to indicate unsafe sound levels. Sometimes teams give their designs names; ours are affectionately called “thing on wall” and “thing on ceiling”.

On Tuesday, Clement and I presented these prototypes as well as the rest of the work that we’ve done so far this summer at the midsummer presentations, attended by other students, OEDK staff and donors.

Slowly Becoming ELEC Majors

After the presentation, we decided to rebuild the previous team’s circuit in order to fully understand how the different components of their design worked together. This proved to be somewhat difficult, as the circuit diagram in the previous team’s documentation wasn’t fully accurate, and the circuit as seen in the current prototype is just a jumbled mess of wires, making it very hard to determine what was connected with what. However, we eventually got 3 out of 4 main components to work: the LCD display, the light-dependent resistor, and the microphone. All that was left was the LED strip.

Each of us grabbed our own Arduino kit and looked for online tutorials on how to hook up a single LED strip. After a few hours and much troubleshooting, we finally got it to work! We then simply integrated the LED wiring into our existing circuit and voila! We had successfully recreated the previous team’s circuit.

On Wednesday, we split into two subteams: Clement and I worked on creating a correct and neater circuit diagram and then began to learn how to control individually addressable RGB LEDs to create different light patterns. Audrey and Wilson worked on finding a way to use code to average the data inputs from the microphone over a period of time. Clement and I had some troubles with the LEDs; we couldn’t get them to light up at all, even by following circuit diagrams online. We enlisted Grant’s help, but he couldn’t get it to work either, no matter what power supply or circuit arrangement we used. We’ll continue to work on that and hopefully have better success next week.

Sports and Hotdogs (for the 2nd Straight Week)

On Wednesday night, we had a trip to BBVA Stadium to watch Houston’s soccer team, the Dynamo, play the New York Red Bulls. It was once again Dollar Hotdog Night; however, I didn’t need that as motivation to watch my favorite sport. It was a great time, as the Dynamo won 4-0! Right after the game was a fireworks show on the field.

 

For July 4, we went to Hermann Park in hopes of watching the Houston Symphony at Miller Outdoor Theatre and then the fireworks. We had arrived to the park at 8 PM, 30 minutes before the symphony was scheduled to start; however, the entire side of the hill facing the stage was full and sadly there were no places for us to lay down our picnic blanket. We decided to sit on the other side of the hill where we still could get an amazing view of the fireworks. For the Malawi interns, July 4 served as the first of a weekend of celebrations, as the Malawian independence day is July 6, just two days after ours.

It’s hard to believe that we are already over halfway done with SEED! Time has flown by. I’ve had a great experience so far and I’m definitely going to enjoy the rest of my time here. Until next week!