Mid-Grant Technical Review

Our Mid-Grant Technical Review was a success! Members of the MIT Club of the Palm Beaches and Dr. Edie Widder, co-founder of ORCA, attended. They offered very constructive and helpful advice on ways to further improve our invention. The review was most important to us in that it was a glimpse into what our showcase at EurekaFest in June will be like, which, unlike our Mid-Grant Review, will be on a much grander scale.

The review began with a meet-and-greet between the members of the MIT Club of the Palm Beaches and the members of our InvenTeam, following a brief introduction by Team Leader, Madeleine Uible.

Next came a presentation from our Communications Sub-Team by way of Maddy Minelli and Sophia Siegel. Maddy and Sophia started their presentation with a brief summary of the project, progress thus far, and the jobs of individual sub-teams: Technical, Finance, and Sustainability.

The Communications Sub-Team also revealed that a Pine School parent, Mr. McLane, opened up his home to serve as our land-based location, to which our invention will sent its data. His house is about ⅓ of a mile from the Kilroy location (as shown in the picture below) and, more importantly, he has a strong background in solar energy. We are very excited to have him as a team member and an integral part of the process!

Most importantly, the Communications Sub-Team outlined the plans for the future: constructing a mounting system that will protect our electronic components from the elements (one that we can also bring to EurekaFest for demonstrations after testing it under realistic conditions for a while) and installing our invention on the same piling as the current Kilroy.

The rest of the review consisted of each Sub-Team outlining what progress they have made thus far in greater detail. This included the Technical Team taking a picture of the audience with the Raspberry Pi we coded! To finish, Madeleine opened it up for questions from the audience, which we found to be the most important part of the entire review. The team was presented with difficult, yet constructive questions to consider in the upcoming months.

The meeting ended with further individual questioning, along with refreshments. We are very pleased with the Review and our very excited about the work that lies in front of us in the months ahead!