Capstone Week 7 - The beginning of the project

At this point in the class there are no updates to make to the report or other deliverables. I think I am going to pass. That would be great. After this class I have three more to take at a community college online. They should not be very much trouble.

With this class wrapping up it is really the beginning of my colorimeter project. There is a lot of work to do to continue iterating and have a core device that is useful to more people. Right now it is only really useful to engineers that want to take the pieces. 

Overall I feel pretty good about this Computer Science program and that I balanced meeting the criteria with doing something I enjoy. I hope to continue my project and deploy it to more users while using it for my own farming systems.

Capstone Week 6 - Sometimes Things Work Out

The official topic for this weeks learning journal is about the ETS test. I did not take this test. To be honest when I got invited to take this test I thought it was on a hidden camera show or being tested because of the software you are required to install to take the test. In order to have a proctor tell if you are cheating you need to give them control over your computer to see what you are doing, what programs are running, etc. That makes sense if you are using a virtual machine and locking the proctor in a small container or are using a disposable computer that has no personal information or access to your home network. I did not have to do either of these and did not have to take the test, so that was really nice and got rid of a lot of stress. In the end I would not have installed this software and would have worked hard to get a low passing grade instead if it was a big problem.

Instead for this week I focused on assembling, debugging, and trying out my circuit boards for the colorimeter. That involved a trip to "Smart and Final" to get a hot plate and cooking the circuit boards like pancakes. The tools I have at home aren't great for this, so I did have some problems. Those problems put me in a great position to select and buy equipment for companies that need to move very quickly. With this personal experience I can continue to push for reflow ovens, high quality soldering tools, high quality solder paste, etc without any doubt.

In the end I had a short circuit on my light board which caused one of the data lines and the light output lines to short to 3.3V. This prevented communication with the color chip. Fixing this problem was nice though because it showed me that if you follow the data sheets for sensors and other microchips then sometimes things work out great. Read the fine print, do a good job, and things just work!

Capstone Week 5 - Presenting Prints Ahoy!

This weeks capstone material presented good points about presenting. It is easy to try to make content super impressive and technical. That doesn't do the presenter a lot of good though. A presentation should be understandable. For me this is important because there will be people outside of my target audience that can help with a project. There are large gaps in my knowledge relating to business and profitability. So if I am giving a presentation about a device that I am working on it would be good to also make it understandable by people with a different field of interests.

Also discussed was making a presentation memorable and emotional. When I give a presentation I try to focus on having very little that needs to be remembered other than a few words that link the structure together. Making a presentation connect emotionally is about honesty.

Outside the reading this week was about designing and printing parts. Although on accident, there was a good lesson in material saving this week. By stopping my print accidently after the first key features were built I was able to make a few small alignment and fit changes. In the example image below the test tube is loose in the holder, so a tighter section was added to the top. The light sensor board on the right was offset slightly by around 1.5mm. So that component was shifted as well. This kind of partial print technique would be good for many applications, including making a close fit around an odd shape.  

 

Cutaway view of print for test fit check of sensor board, light board, and test tube.