Build, Code, Complete

‘Twas the night before Christmas,

When in their workshop,

The InvenTeam was toiling,

Building non-stop.

Wow! What a month! In 31 short days, we went from a loose idea to building working prototypes! Our many meetings with stakeholders and beneficiaries in November allowed us to hit the ground running this month. We were able to take our notes, ideas, and hardware we ordered last month and begin building prototypes of the various systems that will be integrated into our vital sign monitoring system for Search and Rescuers, in addition to fleshing out our idea further.

Our Communications team has been working hard getting us in newspapers, interviewing members of our local Fire Department and Search and Rescue team, keeping the team updated, and managing our Instagram account. (@arhsinventeam, follow us for updates on our project!) You can check out a couple of articles written about us here and here. Their hard work and support have given us energy and motivation over the past month!

Our Technical team has been making steady progress in two teams, a Hardware team and a Software team. These two teams work seamlessly to translate our ideas from a whiteboard into physical prototypes. As the Hardware team unboxes, breadboards, and solders, the Software team downloads programs, writes code, and integrates everything into one working system!

Our Financial team spent the month keeping the Technical team at bay and ensuring we stayed within our budget. Through their hard work and diligent spreadsheeting, we’re not spending more than we need to and are keeping everything documented along the way! In addition to this, they’ve set up a GoFundMe page to send 15 of our members to EurekaFest this summer.

In the coming month, we look forward to continuing work on our prototypes to prepare for our Mid-Grant Technical Review, streamlining and compacting them into the best form they can be! We’ve been in communication with journalists from newspapers in our local region, and we anticipate interviews with them and articles being published in January. Our work is cut out for us in the fundraising department, but we look forward to the bake sales and whatever else shall come.

The past few months of InvenTeam-ing have been amazing for every one of us, and we all look back fondly on the work we did in 2023. Here’s to a great 2024, full of building, coding, emailing, interviewing, and fundraising.

Happy New Year!

The ARHS InvenTeam