David Wise: The post where I update EVERYTHING!

This summer and the end of last year has caused me to be a little lax about posting on the various things I have been working on and what I was building (finals and summer jobs...). I will post full build logs in the next week or so, but this can be a little preview.

So this summer I went to Alaska:

Deploying the Glider from a fishing trawler.

The Marine Robotics Team traveled to Ketchikan, Alaska for the initial sea trials of our autonomous underwater glider. The DoD was running a STEM outreach program for teachers and middle to high school students where the goal was to construct an AUG out of a Nalgene bottle. We were invited to attend this "SeaGlide" workshop and showcase our glider while running sea trials.

I also helped the (almost?) creation of an electric go-kart

Group Photo of the last day of the workshop

I was a mentor at this summer's Engineering Design Workshop. Local high schoolers are put into groups and have 4 weeks to complete the design and fabrication of an engineering project.

Initial BrainStorming

Learning about the Machine Shop

My group completed the rolling chassis of an electric Go-Kart. They did not manage to successfully have it propel itself, but the parts will be put to good use as the next generation of EV's to terrorize campus come into being this fall.

I built a SegBoard

Testing the frame...

I built a self balancing electric skateboard as a procrastination technique from studying for finals. I based the electronics off an Instructable by XenonJohn, but did the mechanical system myself. It utilized a 5 DOF IMU unit from Sparkfun, homebuilt A124 battery pack, electric scooter motors and an arduino as a controller.

It took a little bit of practice to get used to riding it.

Shifting Gears

I also worked on my first project for the MIT Motorsports team at the end of last semester. I had approximately three days to build a shift indicator from scratch before the final competition. Dario and Erik did the programming, while I did the hardware in a hectic 30 or so hours.The goal was for an embedded microcontroller to read a potentiometer mounted to the shifter and display the current gear on an LCD screen.

It was an interesting experience in rapid prototyping to say the least. We ended up using a mini breadboard for the final version, but then someone at competition plugged it in backwards, and the judges wouldn't allow a breadboard on the car for racing. Next time...

It was a pretty jam packed summer. I also worked at the Lahontan Water Quality Control Board doing some data analysis, but I still fit in some fun