EurekaFest & Our Technology
Our year of being an InvenTeam has now come to a close and the last few weeks were quite the adventure. For those that helped us through the process, I wanted to summarize our accomplishments, tell you all about EurekaFest, and give you a peek into things to come.
First, let me describe the most recent status of our technology. Having refocused our efforts since the Eureka Moment, we had mostly finalized the theoretical design of our system as outlined in the two block diagrams below.
In our final weeks we focused all of our efforts on the most innovative aspect of our product and the aspect most likely to yield meaningful intellectual property - the communication system. We needed to be able to achieve bi-directional communication over an extremely long and uninsulated conductor (the fence) without electrical contact. The variability of our physical system prevented us from using commercially available means (i.e. time domain reflectometry) so we had to invent it ourselves. And we did. We developed a system that electromagnetically couples to the fence and can send low energy low voltage bursts that we can convert into binary signals through our receiving system. This means we can send digital information between our base system (the home base) and the modules (distributed along the fence).
Once we achieved the proof of concept, we proceeded to design and etch our own circuit boards for Eurekafest while also concentrating on our actual exhibit for Eurekafest. This included an enormous backdrop as well as an interactive LED system diagram that showed how our overall system works. We complimented this with some explanatory handouts and before we knew it we were packing it all up. We filled seven large cases with equipment for our trip and checked them all - hoping against hope that they would make it to our destination in one piece.
We took the redeye to Boston through Newark and let me tell you - those were some tired kids when we got to Boston. The next three days were a whirlwind of excitement as the team met other teams, participated in the EurekaFest events and continued to finalize and troubleshoot our technology in the dorm room until the wee hours of the night.
Our team nailed the presentation of our technology and, should it have been a competition, would have been in the running for Best in Show for the quality and sheer comprehensiveness of our booth setup. On the last day of EurekaFest they mixed up the teams for a design challenge and we got three students onto the podium. Overall it was a great trip.
Now that it’s summer the team is split across three different continents as we all take some much needed rest and relaxation. What does the future hold for Current Invents and our electric fence system? It all depends on what the students have to say when they get back.
