January Update
Communications
The communications committee worked on a variety of assessments from the plan of action created by Frederique Cesson. What this group accomplished today was consulting Zoe Marshall about the summer blog posts, prepped our Current Invents logo for team t-shirts, wrote a short blurb simply describing what our invention is, and drafted an email for the parents of each student reminding them of points made at the parent meeting and to follow/share Current Invents’ social media pages.
We also worked on pricing out different possibilities of items to include in our press kit. Though this list is not completed, major progress has been made. Through this task, we found that some companies charged way more than others for certain products. A few of these products include business cards, hats, shirts, etc. Along with this, we also took photos of today’s meeting and made a post on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Finally, Brian Cesson created a video based on interviews with Current Invents team members. He asked the team how they would describe the atmosphere of our InvenTeam, if and how we'll find success, and what makes us different than other InvenTeams.
PledgeCents!
We worked on setting up a profile on the online site, PledgeCents.com, to raise money for our trip to EurekaFest this coming June. Although still waiting for an approval from the website itself, we have set up a thorough profile for our project explaining who we are, what we hope to accomplish through the InvenTeam program, and how much money we need to raise.
Financial
Receipts on Their Way
We uploaded and sent out, via mail, two receipts. One receipt came from ordering italian food from a small restaurant called Volare, and the other receipt was from ordering electronic components from a company called Mouser Electronics.
Administrative
Fundraising and Outlines and Sign-Ups, Oh My!
The best fundraising ideas can come from the most spontaneous actions, like that of our Financial Lead Zoe. She surprised us all with waffles today, and guess what our next fundraiser is going to be? Hopefully the rest of the school loves waffles as much as the CurrentInvents do.
Once the excitement over the waffles died down, Francesca (the Technical Lead) and I sat down to formalize our thoughts for the upcoming Mid Year Grant Review. We constructed a basic outline that we plan to populate over the course of the next week or so. By the end of next week, we hope to assign responsibilities and in two weeks do a complete runthrough of our presentation!
Today primarily consisted of following up with the entire team on the email I had sent out several days prior. The topics discussed included fundraising in February, preparing for the Mid Year Grant Review, and communicating the dates of EurekaFest to family and teachers.
Technical
Challenge to Read Signal
Today we attempted to read our signal going through the electric fence using some store bought high voltage dividers and an oscilloscope. Unfortunately, we ran into a couple of problems. At first the oscilloscope wasn’t calibrated correctly, but that was quickly rectified. Later, we encountered problems with the actual readings of the oscilloscope at 3,000 volts. A few meetings before this one, we had already taken measurements form the electric fence, reading 16,000 to 25,000 volts. We eventually decided to merely go with the current readings, and see where that would lead us. Soon thereafter, we attempted to determine if there were any problems with our voltage divider by testing two dividers side by side. Somehow, even though they were both measuring from the same terminals, and were from the same manufacturer, their readings had differences over 1,000 volts.
That was where we stopped, another extremely painful, excruciating, and mind blowing day.
Fritzing Time
We also started Fritzing today. Fritzing is software used to design and create circuit boards. We began putting together the circuit board for the voltage divider and began looking up how to create custom parts. We faced many challenges today. Initially, when designing the original circuit, Fritzing only provided us with resistor values that were up to 100M Ω, when we needed at least 1G Ω. We also were faced with an inadequate library of available parts, so we began to research how to make our own. After overcoming a multitude of challenges, we were able to design the entire circuit excluding the input, sensor, and ground pins.
We weren’t able to get any data from our fence because we were using the oscilloscope for the voltage divider. We wanted to finish getting data on the distance and how the voltage changes over length. After we do that we want to identify a break and an intercept.
You Will Be Shocked
We also began work on creating a circuit that will shock others by pressing a button. The purpose of it is to have an example of what we're working on that people can touch, and to help us have a fun way to teach about circuits to people who we are presenting to. We started by soldering wires onto a transformer, and other wires onto a button.
Today Greta and I started to work on the circuit that will go into the shock box. We got the circuit working today and sutured the buttons to the wires so that tomorrow we can complete the circuit. When the circuit is complete we can start working on the frame and design of the box itself so that we can finish by tomorrow.
