Not having posted since the end of fall term, I have no idea if anyone checks this anymore. Obviously that’s not stopping me from posting.
So what’s happened since? Well, nothing really. I’ve done a lot of homework. Probably more these past two terms than at any point during my tenure at Eastern. And I’m sure it’s only going to get worse. Ah, fun.
Today was my last final for spring term. I had linear algebra, calc II and engineering programming. The last had us learning to program in C. For our final project we had to write a program that would accept a string of text, translate it into Morse Code, beam it via infrared light, receive the signal, display the morse print out and then translate it back to English. Daunting, but we got it done. Our professor took the video below (with his phone, so pardon the quality). There’s not much to see, but it gives you an idea of what we did.
Exciting, no? What is exciting is that I’ll be flying to Philly this summer for anyone who happens to be in the area. I arrive on 24 August and fly out again on 31 August. So one full week for all your Donald needs. I’ve forgotten what the humidity is like on that side of the country, so I may be dead part way into the week.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Hols is flying in on Saturday and spending the week here (finally!), so I may have photos of that later on.
Once again I am guilty of not having posted more frequently. The last time I wrote it was for the start of the term. Maybe it’s fitting that I not write again until the end of the term? At any rate, this term is basically over for me. We presented our final project on Wednesday, and all I really have to do is show up and watch the rest of the presentations. So by this Wednesday I will be officially done. Yeah!
For my ECE 101 class, half of our grade was to make a Rube Goldberg machine (think Mousetrap the game), but we had to use at least three electrical components. Sadly, my group was a waste, and I ended up doing most of the work. At any rate, the gist of it is as follows: There is an electromagnet holding up a ball bearing at the top of the ramp. When the door opens, the circuit is broken and the electromagnet fails releasing the ball bearing. The ball rolls down the ramp and at the bottom completes the circuit to a DC motor. The motor lowers a cup on to a photoresistor on the ground. When the photoresistor is covered, it turns on the LED on the table. Voila! Door opens, light goes on.
Ours may not have been as flashy as some of the other groups, but it had more electrical know-how than what was taught in class. Plus if my group had actually contributed any ideas who knows what we could have done. As it stands, I’m pretty happy with the end result.
I’ve uploaded the video to YouTube, so it should be viewable below.
