February BuzzBand Update

After a month of being virtual, we met back in person on February 5th!

During February we dedicated most of our time towards the Mid-Grant Technical Review (MGTR), an in-person and broadcasted showcase on February 26th. We invited experts we’ve spoken with, parents of children on the autism spectrum, local school representatives, and our media and Lemelson-MIT contacts.

MGTR was a big success!  The event consisted of a thirty minute presentation from all our members, and 90 minutes of tables for each individual subteam.  Our members showed off the BuzzBand’s progress using posters, flyers, presentations, and hands-on demonstrations.  We received positive and constructive feedback from all our attendees.  One attendee said, “I see a bright future for this team and can’t wait to see what they do next”.  Another gave us helpful advice with sustainability; “ Think about sustainability in two parts. The external fabric surface, and the core (rest of the) product”. We look forward to applying all the feedback to BuzzBand 2.0.

Of course, our prototype has received lots of love this month too.  The technical team is working on fixing issues regarding the synchronization of the speakers and vibration code. We’ve also added an amplifier speaker to increase the volume of the speaker.

In addition, our outreach team reached out to the Carnegie Science Center about potential outreach opportunities.  We are excited to work with them!

Thank you for all the support!