January Blog Post
It’s that time of year again! Even though we've had our month cut short due to a holiday break, we’ve still been working hard to finish our project.
Our marketing team has been making phone calls and sending emails to find end users for our mid-grant review. It’s also time for us to start considering transportation options for EurekaFest®️ in Washington D.C. in June. The finance team is starting to look at different airfare and bus prices for travel and has been coming up with fundraising ideas so that our team members do not have to pay out of pocket to a certain degree.
Meanwhile, our technical team has been focused on constructing our first functioning prototype. In addition, they’re coding the prototype app and soldering wires to the Hx711 chip for a load cell system . They’ve also wrapped up both their research and presentations. Our technical, software, and electrical teams have not separated for the time being, since their work goes so hand in hand.
Our software team also has started to get accustomed with the Blynk software that they will be using for our app. We’ve had a few setbacks in communication with the software, but we are working hard with the salespeople from Blynk to get our application up and running.
This month, we also had our first snowstorm to kick off the winter, and are going to have another one coming soon. This is really motivating us to get a prototype ready so that we can test it on the snow soon.
The research lead for Billerica Memorial High School’s InvenTeam worked on a survey for our end users to give us information on their previous experiences with snowfall on their buildings. They compiled a series of questions for our end users. One of the biggest challenges was to think about everything that could possibly affect the end user regarding the product such as the size of their roof, previous experience with snowfall, etc.
That just about wraps up what we’ve done for now, so from everyone in the BMHS InvenTeam, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
