Williamston High School InvenTeam Blog #2

Welcome back to Williamston High School InvenTeam’s second blog post where we will be posting monthly updates on the team’s progress so far. We have had lots of progress this month with many community outreach events and fundraising, as well as a lot of progress on our invention as a whole.

Recap:
Members of the team are: Faith Schafer (administrative lead), Allyson Suandi (communications lead), Amanda Jaworsky (research lead), Gabe Lounsbury (sustainability lead), Owen Gulick (technical lead), Jack Schafer (technical lead), Katelyn Kersten (financial lead), Emmett Fountain (programming lead), Noah Palmatier (engineering team member), Cam Denk (engineering team member), Will Bellinger (engineering team member), Ethan Egger (engineering team member), Trucy Phan (PR team member), Nick Rubeck (engineering and PR team member), and our lovely advisors: Joe Rasmus and Steve Kersten.

Our team’s mission is to create an autonomous beach cleaning device that will remove small pieces of plastic that are often missed by other beach cleaning methods. It will identify and collect the plastics which will then be filtered through a system that will separate the plastic from the sand and other natural pieces of the environment in order to ensure that we will not disturb the natural environment surrounding the beaches.
In June, our team will be flying to Washington, D.C. to attend a conference called EurekaFest. Hosted by the Lemelson-MIT Program, this event will afford us the opportunity to present our prototype, engage in fun activities with students who have similar interests, and get advice from experts in engineering and invention. We will use the Lemelson-MIT Program’s grant money to develop, build and finalize our invention. In order for our entire team to be able to attend EurekaFest, the Williamston High School InvenTeam needs your help. Tax-deductible donations can be made to “InvenTeams” via the Williamston Schools Foundation (P.O. Box 70, Williamston, MI 48895). Your support is greatly appreciated!
We are also doing corporate sponsorships! Through this, we have different levels of memberships based on how much the corporation donates. The platinum membership is when corporations donate $500 where a picture of our team in front of the corporation will be posted on all of our social media pages. The silver membership is when corporations donate $1000 where they receive what the platinum membership gets and they receive a bonus tshirt with the name of their corporation on the back. The gold membership is when corporations donate $1500 where they receive what the silver membership gets, a banner that will be displayed at our Mid-Grant Review, and a sticker on our autonomous beach cleaning device.

Fundraising and Community Outreach Updates:
Letters and Donations!
Last month, each member of the team sent out twenty solicitation letters to friends and family that explained what InvenTeams® is, what our team was creating, and about EurekaFest. We also sent letters out to corporations and are still hoping to get some corporate sponsors as well. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated! We have raised almost $5000 through these solicitation letters which will be put towards our fund to travel to EurekaFest in June!

Light Parade
On December 7th the team partnered with the Williamston Schools Foundation (WSF) to be a part of their float in our town’s light parade. We passed out goodie bags with information about the team for the parents and candy for the kids! It was a great way to do community outreach!

Panera Fundraiser
On December 9th, the team hosted a fundraiser at Panera where if customers showed a flyer with our team name on it, 20% of the profits would go towards the team. We passed these flyers out during school and promoted it on our social media pages for people to be able to screenshot and use. We also included these flyers in our information goodie bags that we passed out during the light parade! We were so happy with the big turnout from our community! We ended up raising a total of $118.12.

Kara Hope and WKAR
Representative Kara Hope of Michigan’s 67th House District came to visit the team on December 13th. She presented us with awards of congratulations and asked us information on our mission and what our invention was. She was happy to hear we were targetting a problem that is evident in our Great Lakes, as an environmentalist herself, and she was also very impressed with what we were accomplishing as high schoolers. We also talked to her about a house bill that is being passed that will ban smoking on beaches, which the team was very interested in considering the fact that cigarette butts and cigar tips were one of the most commonly found pieces of plastic pollution alongside the Great Lakes. A WKAR representative also came and asked us a couple questions alongside Rep. Hope. We plan on doing a segment with WKAR in either late January or February.

Rotary Club
The team went to the Rotary Club on December 17th and presented. Gabe Lounsbury (Sustainability Lead), Katelyn Kersten (Financial Lead), and Allyson Suandi (Communications Lead) took the reigns on presenting on behalf on the team. The club was very interested in our invention and thought that we were targetting a very pressing issue on behalf of the community. They suggested that we apply for one of their travel grants to help our team travel to EurekaFest which we plan on doing immediately!

Meeting With Stockbridge
On December 19th, the Stockbridge team came to meet us in order to talk about our joint mid-grant review at Michigan State University. We talked about the logistics and how we are planning to send out invitations and how we want to schedule and allocate time. We are excited to be able to present together and we hope for a successful event!

Save The Date! Upcoming Events!
The Williamston High School InvenTeam and the Stockbridge Inventeam’s Mid-Grant Review will be at Michigan State University on February 15th. We also have future build days for the team on January 2nd and January 4th!

Updates from Management Team

Technical Lead
We got the vacuum that we purchased last month to run on 12v dc batteries which happened to work swimmingly. We also took apart the vacuum motor to understand the inner workings of it bette and to do further research on motor systems. Team member Will Bellinger alongside both technical leads Owen Gulick and Jack Schafer made presentations on different motor systems and the team ended up deciding to go with electric wheelchair motors, which happen to have great gearboxes on them and a lot of power that we need. We also did a lot of research on different track systems and chassis. When comparing the pros and the cons of different tracks and balloon tires we ended up deciding to order the balloon tires which should be coming in over break. We are also in contact with Chinese companies just in case about track systems if the balloon tires do not work out. Overall great work from the team this month and things are finally starting to come together! We can’t wait to get a lot of work done on January 2nd and January 4th for our team build days.

Programming Lead

Progress has been somewhat slow. The cameras have been implemented but due to slight variations between the cameras used for testing and the final ones used for the prototype, the method for locating plastics has to be altered slightly. Along with this, the plastic detection software was a bit inaccurate so further modifications are being made to improve its accuracy. Some of the basic math has been laid out to determine the location of a particular piece of plastic but it hasn’t been integrated with the detection software yet. We now have a motor driver for the stepper motor on the vacuum track but it has not been wired or programmed yet.

Administrative Lead
The team light parade float went successfully. We did the presentation at the rotary which went successfully and will have submitted a grant to them by the end of the month. The PR team has been hard at work setting all of these fundraisers up and creating the presentation slideshows. In the Panera fundraiser we have been hard at work writing thank you letters to all the people who donated during our letter writing campaign. We also met with representative Kara Hope and we are going to keep in contact with a WKAR representative to do a feature in the future. We also met with the Stockbridge team to plan the mid grant review details and have created an invitation, invitation list and RSVP form and have begun presentation practice for that.

Communications Lead
The team has been hard at work promoting our community outreach event such as the light parade, the panera fundraiser, the rotary club, and meeting up with representative Kara Hope. The communications lead also presented for the team at the rotary club presentation. Our Instagram is @williamstoninventeam and our Facebook page is Williamston High School InvenTeam where you will hear about the team’s progress, updates on events that we are doing, behind the scenes footage, fundraising that we are doing, and ways that you can help the team! The communications lead has also been filming a fun vlog of some behind the scenes action and a monthly recap of what the team has accomplished so far which will be uploaded later this week!

Financial Lead
We have done a lot of ordering this month! The team ordered motors from eBay, an electronic converter, and balloon tires. The team has also been hard at work with fundraising with our solicitation letters, the panera fundraiser, the light parade, and the rotary club. We are working on getting the rotary club grant right now. The financial lead also presented at the rotary club on behalf on the team. The budget spreadsheet has also been fully uploaded.

Research Lead
Our research lead has just finished taking the IRB members research classes and has learned lots of great information which can hopefully be applied to the future. So far as research lead, the research lead has been helping the PR team create presentations and schedule fundraising events such as the Panera Fundraiser, the light parade, Kara Hope, and the rotary club. The research lead has also been helping write thank you notes for those who have donated from our solicitation letters.

Sustainability Lead
This past month has been very productive for us as a whole. We have begun transforming power from a battery into a viable way to power the vacuum. This will be a huge part of the sustainability of the device. Our ultimate goal would be for the device to need to charge as little an amount as possible. Maximizing the efficiency of the vacuum will be a key factor. Since we are using a 12 volt battery to power a 110 volt vacuum, finding a converter was key. However, one major factor in a converter is the increase in amperage in accordance with the voltage step up will cause. We are working to find the most effective power for the vacuum to still be able to collect plastic but also not pull too many watts out of the battery. This will be a trial and error process but once we have found this, it will greatly increase the efficiency of the battery.