Our fourth engineer design challenge was to create a piece of furniture out of recycled material, with an electronic twist with an Arduino. My group decided to build a stool out of four cardboard rolls and an upside down milk crate for the seat. We also used an old curtain and some foam for a cushion and decoration, as well as spray painting the legs black. Structurally, our chair was very strong and could hold me up for a long time.
Our Arduino component was a security system using RFID. The system used an ultrasonic sensor to judge distances and if you got with in one foot an LED and a piezo buzzer went off. To arm the system you used a unique key card and pressed it to a pad, then a blue LED turned on, indicating it was armed as well as the LCD screen said "SYSTEM ARMED". Overall, our stool turned out really well and I learned how to use ultrasonic sensors, RFID and LCDs. The Arduino component was really well done and took a lot of work and coding to pull off.
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My initial impressions of the Mechatronics Academy are pretty good. So far the workload has been larger than grade 9, but not by a whole lot. The work we have done has challenged me to think outside the box and has been very hands on. So far I really like this approach to the learning we do in the Academy. We also have done technical drafting, CAD modeling in Fusion 360 and a few engineer design challenges. For me the most challenging part was was CAD modeling, as I have never done it before. However once I learned the basics of Fusion it has been pretty easy. I also have enjoyed the positive, friendly feel of most of the people in the Academy as this is my first year at W.H. Croxford and I do not know much people.
My expectations coming into the Academy were pretty similar to how the program has turned out so far. I thought that there would be lots of collaborative work and hands on projects. I was expecting a more flexible and less structured schedule than regular classes. I also thought it would be a lot of work. So far these expectations have been met. We do quite a lot of collaborative work and we have done quite a few projects where we got to actively make something and design a product. There has not been quite as much work as I expected but I feel like this will change soon. The scheduling is also pretty flexible and you are not always walked through everything. I feel like this is a good thing because it allows us to problem solve and build important skills. So far I have been meeting lots of new people and every seems really nice. Pretty much everyone in the program wants to learn and enjoys the work we do in class. Everyone is willing to help me if I need it and it is just a really cool environment. I have also made some new friends that I wouldn’t have made in a regular program. This is because we do a lot of collaborative work and we have lots of opportunities to interact with each other. So far I have been contributing very well to my group work. I have been coming up with lots of ideas and building our prototypes with my groups. For my spaghetti bridge I did lots of work for our group. I have been supportive and helping out others when they need it. I have not really been exploring many ideas for my passion project, but I think that I want to do either game design or make a prototype electronic device. The reason I want to do one of these things is because I’m interested in those fields. I am very excited for the future to see what I learn in Mechatronics 10. Thank you for watching my first video update for my Mechatronics Academy. |
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