Parent Fundraising Meeting

The parents that attended were Rita Garcia, Anna Moya Troyer, Toma Shaver, and Ann McCartney. Clara and Danielle (myself) were present at the meeting. The following ideas were discussed: a math and science night, car wash, candy apple sales, chocolate sales, hot dog sales at tracker supply, coffee sales, selling hot chocolate at school with hot dogs, a movie night, and a Dion's Night.

With the discussion of ideas, the topic of Isotopes Fundraising during the summer came into the conversation. It was briefly talked about how the student's earnings were going into the fundraising collection. The final decisions were made on what fundraising was going to be done and by who.

(Subject to change)
Donation Letter- Ann McCartney
Movie Night- Rita Garcia
Dion's night- Anna Moya Troyer
Chocolate sales- Ann McCartney
Hot Chocolate Sales- Clara Sims, Danielle Garcia, and Toma Shaver

Official Dates of future fundraisers will be posted in the near future.

Ann, Clara, Rita, Anna discussing ideas

Anna sharing an opinion on the chocolate sales 

Rita suggesting the candy sales

Danielle sharing an idea about the Movie Night

Toma asking about the car wash taking place at Tracker Supply

 

Presentation at ACME Worldwide

Today, a few of the members of the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam presented to the project manager and two engineers at ACME Worldwide in Albuquerque.

Chloe showing the Lemelson-MIT video.

Maria discussing the Police ALERT system.

Looking at the project outline.

Zack and Chloe talking about the technical aspects of the invention.

Thank you cards

Just finished our thank you cards so sponsors should be expecting them soon! We really appreciate everything everything everyone has done for us!

Another Sunday Night at Quelab

Students worked at Quelab tonight - mostly on coding.  Trey, a first time visitor to Quelab, helped Zack and Albert out with some programming issues. 

Adric and JT talked to the team about an idea for making mirror prototypes.  The idea is to have a cone-shaped template made on a 3D printer at Quelab.  Then use it as a mold for vacuum forming a plastic piece.  This plastic piece would be used as a mirror once it was coated.  We might try to do this on Tuesday night.  The next openhack night at Quelab. 

Feedback and Comments

Here are just some of the great feedback and comments from Mid-Grant Review. We hope to impliment the suggestions then host another Technical Review session closer to EurekaFest.

And one of our favorites, Thanks Toby! 

InvenTeam member attend Patent Workshop at TVC

Most of SODA InvenTeam members were able to attend a patent workshop at Technology Ventures Corporation today.  Bruce M. Winchel did a fantastic non-stop, four-hour presentation on how to write your own patent application.

SODA students at TVC patent workshop.

After workshop lunch at Que Huong.

MGR Photo Slideshow

We just finished putting together a slideshow of the pictures from the Mid-Grant Review!

Check it out:

SODA InvenTeam MGR - slideshow

We will be editing the video footage and posting those as soon as possible.

Mid-Grant Review Success! :D

Tonight was an overall success! We had some difficulties at first and unfortunately some mentors couldn't attend but I think the team did really well and I am very proud of everyone. We will be posting more pictures and a video compilation of the night on the blog once we edit them! Special thanks to all the parents who helped and everyone who attended.
Stay tuned!

Technical Update

OUR CURRENT PROGRESS:
We are making significant progress with the raspberry pi. As of last night, we have the raspberry pi running a camera that is facing a conical mirror, and then lighting up LEDs that correspond to the direction of where the motion is detected.
WHAT WE HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH IN THE FUTURE:
The raspberry pi works inconsistently. Sometimes the program runs great, and other times the raspberry pi will not connect to the camera. We need to patch the bugs that are not allowing are software to run consistently. Also, we need to optimize our code in a way that we have a higher frame rate, and a more accurate way to determine which LED should light up.

PTC Meeting and More Robotics

Today (Wednesday), two members of the SODA InvenTeam presented to the Parent-Teacher Committee.  At the end of their presentation, they asked about help with community outreach ideas.  After some discussion, the PTC offered to help the team with a booth at the upcoming 14th Annual Valencia County Hispano Chamber of Commerce Matanza.  Should be a fun event for the students.

Maria and Chloe presenting to the PTC.

InvenTeam member Victoria working with FRC team member Garrett on robot.

SODA students working on cutting and drilling material for various STEM projects.

Police Car Traveling Prototype Complete!

Yesterday, we completed the police car traveling prototype. When giving a presentation, the model will give our audience a visual representation of what the average police car would look like with Police ALERT attached. This will  be able to show our audience how Police ALERT works and how it will keep them safe.

Conical Mirrors

Investigating further with the help from the link that Mr. Edington's sent me I have fond that light doesn't reflect off of the mirrors the way I though it did. Light reflects off of the mirror equal to the degree of the mirror (Illustration below). So I suggest that we either use a larger mirror (left) so that the camera would be able to see what is on the side of the car or we can use a smaller mirror (right) but we would have to put it upside down which will probably work better. (Here are a few to links http://dasl.mem.drexel.edu/Hing/tutorials/omnicam/homebrew_omnicam.htm and http://www.exo.net/~jyu/activities/conical%20mirror.pdf )

SODA's InvenTeam Presenting to Governing Council

Three members of the InvenTeam presented the status of their project to the Governing Council.

InvenTeam members in the back, waiting to present.

Zack, Chloe, and Maria after their presentation.

Another busy Sunday for SODA students

Most weekends, there are several students working on various projects at SODA.  This Sunday was no exception.  Besides the InvenTeam students, there were several other students in and out of the room throughout the day.

10:00 AM - Chloe arrives and starts working on paperwork for the InvenTeam.

10:30 AM - Botball team captain and FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team member Jose arrives and starts working on cutting pvc pipe.  Some of the pipe is for the FRC robot and a whole lot is for the Botball game course.

11:00 AM - Albert and Denton arrive at SODA.  Albert starts working on the vision for the Police ALERT camera.  Denton starts working on the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) robot.

11:30 AM - Members of the FIRST Tech Challenge arrive to pick-up their robot and equipment to go to the New Mexico Natural History Museum in Albuquerque.  A FTC game field has been set-up there for teams to use for the next month.  Another adult mentor is taking them to the museum.

Noon - Clara and Zack arrive.  Clara starts working on the police car demo model.  Zack starts working on the FRC netbooks and OpenCV for the Police ALERT.

12:30 PM - Daniel arrives and starts working on making more mirrors for the prototype.

1:00 PM - Victoria and Maria arrive.  Maria is working on building a large centrifuge for her science fair project.  Victoria starts working on InvenTeam finance items.

2:30 PM - Late lunch break.  Food from Dion's.

3:00 PM - I inadvertently break one of the LED indicator rings that Chloe had spent an hour soldering to an extension board. 

3:30 PM - InvenTeam members Denton and Danielle along with Jose take a break for their projects to work on learning how to import png images to netlogo for their Supercomputing Challenge projects.  Denton's project deals with modeling blood-borne pathogens.  Jose's projects deals with designing a program to help maximize golf course management.  Danielle's project deals with pairing a drone and land-based robots together to solve mazes.

4:00 PM - Clara leaves.

4:30 PM - Maria leaves to take parts to her project to welded at her uncle's house.

5:30 PM - Jose leaves.

6:15 PM - The remaining students have packed up the essential parts of their projects and we head to Quelab for Hacknight.

7:00 PM - Chloe, Denton, Zack, Albert, Victoria, and I arrive at Quelab.  Chloe and Victoria work on bread-boarding an LED indicator.  Zack and Albert start working on writing code to port data from the Raspberry Pi to the LED indicator.  Denton works on the FRC robot.

8:00 PM - Receive call that the FTC team has returned to SODA after a great day of practicing with their robots and the museum.  The high school FTC team has their autonomous code working near perfect.

9:45 PM - Leave Quelab.

10:15 PM - Arrive back at SODA and unload vehicle. 
 
10:30 PM - Students go home.

The students spent part of Saturday rearranging the room to make space for projects

 and robot competitions.

FRC team member Jose anding pvc pipe for catapult arm.

Clara working on mounting hinges for scale demo model.

Denton working on FRC robot.

Danielle working on making more mirrors.

Chloe trying to get the indicator to work correctly.

FRC robot's catapult arm built by Jose and InvenTeam members

Danielle and Chloe working on even more mirror designs.

Maria looking in the FRC parts for a drive wheel for her science fair centrifuge.

Denton's got the first part side of the catapult slide built for the FRC robot.

Maria and Victoria working on their Supercomputing Challenge project.

Danielle working on methods to import images of mazes into netlogo to be solved.

Clara adding details to the model car for the Police ALERT model.

Progress on the FRC robot so far.  Over half of it was built by InvenTeam members.

Working on Botball course.  Jose and InvenTeam members worked well sharing classroom space.

Chloe and Albert - still trying to get the indicator to work.

Clara with mostly finished police car model.

Chloe with just paid-for Quelab users card for InvenTeam.

Denton using shop at Quelab to work on FRC robot frame.

Victoria and Chloe working on second method for indicator panel.

Zack, Victoria, and Denton in back shop at Quelab.

Albert and Chloe still working on indicator warning lights.

Albert, Zack, Chloe, and Victoria trying not be stuck on - you guessed it - the indicator lighting.

Morgan from Quelab helping Albert and Chloe with programming the indicator light.

Still helping and Zack jumps in.

Still trying to figure it out.

And Bandit offers Zack some more advice.