This morning I woke up early in order to get some supplies at Home Depot and hit the grocery store before the day became too busy. Just needed some spray paint and outlet covers at Home Depot, and wanted some food items for the weekend for grilling. Ferg and I began cleaning our my workroom downstairs, but after a few hours we were far from finished with the job. Decided to use my beer can stand and grill a chicken in the Kamado, however, my Kamado Jr. was not big enough to fit the chicken, so I ended up doing it in the oven. Still good.
Sign
It has taken quite a while to come together, but Senior Myles Y has nearly completed the large metal sign that will hang on the wall outside our shop. The CAD required was fairly complex, and was mostly done in Inkscape. He had to break our logo down into 4 equal parts, plus a center part to make everything fit on our waterjet, which was the machine used to cut each piece. There were a lot of hiccups, and the waterjet can be a temperamental machine at times, so there were a few stop and go moments on this project. Still, Myles persevered and we put up most of the pieces of the sign today and it looked great. There is a plan to add LED lighting on the back, but that will most likely fall on a different student next year as Myles is graduating. A few photos of the project below.
Robotics Club
I completely forgot to post about the Robotics Club, which Mr. Christy and myself are the moderators. To be fair, Mr. Christy spends much more time with the students, often staying until 8 or 9pm with them during the buildup to a recent contest. This year, the team participated in the MATE ROV competition, which is an underwater rover robot event. The event was at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy on the Cape, and we were there early in the morning. The contest was a little disorganized, and the start time was quite delayed. But that gave our team plenty of time to prepare and organize, since this was our first time at the event. We had two stints in the water with the robot, and the team learned a great deal from the day. Fortunately, we won! Out of the 4 scoring categories, we took 3 of them. We were completely surprised, but very happy for our students.
This means the team will now compete in the international event held in Long Beach, California. Mr. Christy has spent a lot of energy working on corporate sponsorship, and at this time we have raised nearly $20,000 to get the team to California, as well as created ongoing sponsorships for years to come. It’s been a great success, and no matter what happens in Long Beach, the team is going to get better and better each year. Unfortunately, neither myself or Mr. Christy will be able to attend the event in California, so a couple of parent chaperones will go with our team. I’ve posted a few photos below of the team and the rover. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get any good video of the rover underwater!
Cardboard Canoes
It has been 4 years since we last competed in the Cardboard Canoe races, and while we had a very sturdy boat, it was almost too sturdy. It tipped over too easy because if floated so well and was not easy for our students to control. Those freshmen who built the canoe are now seniors and are working on a new boat for this years races. Our shop has 2 entrants a senior team and a junior team. It’s exciting to see their work, and to see how far our shop has come in providing our students with the tools to make these incredible objects. A few photos below of the construction process. The event is June 12th, and I will post more info as we approach the date.
Radio V2
Not sure why I have been so enamored with making bluetooth radios lately. My original Pi Radio still is not complete, but it’s a bit out of my hands at the moment. I purchased an old Rogers radio from England and converted it into a bluetooth radio, and it works very well. In addition to that I wanted to make my own radio using our lasercutter here in the shop and create everything in a CAD model. Today I was finalizing an updated version for my father, which includes a newly designed circuit board that is modeled in the CAD file. The new board adds a couple of diodes to help with interference from the battery pack, which was affecting the sound. I will post a more detailed writeup on the construction of the radio, but for now here are a few photos from today.
