A new week! After the weekend, I was feeling refreshed and ready to get back to work this week. Over the weekend I read lots of documentation for the Gastric Pump project and did research for the Smart Helmet project, which was tiring, but it better prepared me for this week of work. The team leads also started a shared Spotify playlist so that we have some background music for when working. This is a huge event as I love to contribute to music things and hear other’s music tastes. Lastly over the weekend, I decided to start writing my blog day by day, so if I say “today” multiple times within the same week’s blog, now you know why 🙂
Monday
Today, we started the day with a workshop from Dr. Hunter and Dr. Taylor on the Engineering Design Process. I’ll be honest, when I saw that on the calendar yesterday, I thought it was going to be like ENGI 120 all over again, but I was definitely wrong. Yes, we still went over the familiar aspects of the engineering design process, but there was so much more than that. I heard personal field experience from Dr. Taylor and learned about data gaps, something that any engineer should try to avoid. There was personal advice, as well as education on the topic that simply could not be covered in the scope of ENGI 120. I genuinely enjoyed this workshop. But I couldn’t sit long after the workshop as Parnika and I had to run to a client meeting for the Gastric Pump project, where we interviewed our client and the mentor of the old group working on the project. We collected lots of helpful information, and we will use this to guide our engineering design process. After a lunch break, I met up with Janie and we soldered our haptic motors to wires, then added female connections to the other end of the wires, crimping them on. Turns out, I’m okay with soldering, but not the best with crimping, so I guess it’s something that I can work on over the summer. We ended our day with researching a power amp that we need to actually conduct testing. Overall a good day, and looking forward to tomorrow!
Tuesday
Another day! Today started out very well, as we have a new team member for Team PuMPED, Diya! Today for the team, we started making a tentative schedule for the next 2-3 weeks, what we want to get done day by day and at ends of weeks. We then decided that what we need to work on for today and tomorrow is our Design Context Review and our Problem Statement. A design context review is a research document that allows us to break down our problem into components and then research the specifics of it. Today we started that process as well as making a list of materials we need to order to create the old prototype that the previous team made (we cannot locate their prototype). All in all the morning was productive and made lighter by our newfound SEED Spotify Playlist. The afternoon was actually a success, to Janie and I’s surprise. We actually got the haptic motors to start vibrating, due to a new Arduino system and code that we found online. We have a lot of kinks to work out, but that was a big win. We also got our Raspberry Pi working, but sadly we may not have to use it as we might need to use our laptops instead. Oh well!
Wednesday
Today was tiring for me, I just wasn’t really feeling it today. I started the day with meeting with Team PuMPED, where we finished ordering materials for our replica prototype. Parnika and Diya did more research for our DCR and we realized that we needed to 3D print the casing for the prototype. So, after a quick morning standup, I created the box and box lid on SolidWorks and then started printing them (16 hours!!). We had a talk this morning by Dr. Read, where he showed us his PolyVent and talked about open source medical devices. After a quick lunch trip (CHAUS!!), I finished up some DCR work for the team, and then we had a great Arduino workshop given by Dr. Trevas (definitely did not blow an Arduino :)) ). My day ended with presenting Dr. Holmes with Janie and I’s haptics work and making plans for our next steps.
Thursday
I think today’s blog will be longer, maybe more personal. I had a good day today, did a lot with both teams (we got the gastric pump protoype 🙂 ), and we also had another very nice luncheon. But today, I had a one-on-one meeting with Dr. Holmes, where he asked me questions about this summer, what I want to takeaway from this whole SEED experience, and also we had a conversation governed by my interests in engineering. I want to reflect a little bit on what we talked about. I think that this summer I really want to get a knowledge of electronics, improve my CAD skills, and continue working on my skillset of using the engineering design process effectively. But I think this is all in the context that I just want to learn. Throughout the school year, I saw what my classmates knew and what they had been exposed too, and I was frankly a little jealous. This is unjust of course and instead of taking a growth mindset and allowing myself to be honest, I took a view of self-pity. But by the end of the school, I knew that I could learn instead of mope around. I think SEED is a way for me to be exposed to a side of engineering that I haven’t seen before, but I really wanted. This summer has allowed me time to develop skills that I didn’t have before e.g. using SolidWorks. I am genuinely happy at this workplace, and also just in life, I think this summer and specifically this program has allowed me to reset my mentality, lots of my habits, and just how I think. So yeah, I think today was a good day.
Friday
FRIDAYYYYYY. I woke up early today so that I could get to the OEDK to get some wiring done with the gastric team. I think today’s blog will be a little short, but I had a really great day today, I got to go to Target to shop for snacks and toiletries for the international students, and my Gastric team also made lots of progress, finishing our Design Criteria and our weekly calendar (for next week). We wired the prototype and hope to have it working on Tuesday. I did a lot more CADing and started to brainstorm form factor ideas for the box shape. All in all a really good day, and we had some great music playing today, which always always always makes me happy! :)))
Signing off till next week!
Mina