Module 9

Step 1- Getting Excited

T-Shirt

Shirt will be in a school color
Front: Sacred heart crest with 'SHU Engineering' underneath
Back: quote that is engineering centred.

Lego Sumo Strategies:

For our group we are planning on creating a robot that is not only able to move around but also fight. We are unsure if we want to create a more square like robot like in the video shown to us, or one that has a ramp that flips upward. Either of these designs will be more focused on the robot being able to move around the ring easily. Our end result however, will depend on the mobility that the lego robots are limited to, if we believe it to be too slow we will instead focus on a robot that is offensively superior.  


Step 2: Planning

Build Strategy

Stephen and Lucinda will work on Mission 1
Nate will work on Mission 2 and 4
Ryan will work on Mission 3
Lucinda will work on Mission 5
Stephen will assemble all the missions together

We decided to not work in pairs for the missions outside of mission one. This was because we believed that separating the work load this way would be the most effective. So, while Lucinda and Stephen were doing Mission One which we knew would take the longest, Ryan and Nate were able to keep progress moving forward by working on seperate missions. On this note, we believed each mission outside of Mission One did not need to have people paired up as it would have at least one person sitting without doing anything.

Track3r Mission One:

Track3r Mission Two:

Track3r Mission Three:

Track3r Mission Four:

Track3r Mission Five:

Step 5 Mind-storm Code Explorations:

The medium motor block controls the speed and how the entire robot moves around. By the medium motor has two main things, the entire speed and direction that the motor moves. The move steering block controls which direction the robot moves. It can control forward, backward, left, and right. On top of this it can also control where and when the robot stops. The sound block can create sound. It can play both pre-recorded songs or just specific musical notes. Display block can display text or graphics on the EV3 Brick display.

Mission 5 Code Explanation:

The fifth mission is a time trial. Its code starts by having the machine count down 75 seconds. During this time, the "blades" attachment is being powered to rotate at 75 power from the medium. The code tells the block that if it touches any red colour an error alarm is played at full blast. But, if the block senses any of the colours: yellow, brown, green, or blue, a fanfare sound is played. This fanfare sound is to signal that a tire has been moved from its original position, which is on top of one of the the four colours. If the task is completed, touching the four colours listed above, a cheering sound is played. But, if the time runs out, a crying sound is played out.

Module 8

Data Analysis Presentation:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fxF3PKSpqquGZDZ5tXLjLvAYzkLwwKxgJ2TbJj-5muM/edit?usp=sharing

Module 7

Step 1: Pre-Meeting (Waste)
1. The first idea for waste that we thought about was the amount of food that is not eaten but taken out of the cafeteria area. When looking at the revolving trays, many plates still have a large amount of food left on them. This on top of nationwide food waste numbers increasing every year, we need to be able to decrease our own school's food waste. We could collect this data by following a student and recording how much food is put on their plate compared to how much is left when they are done eating. After doing this with a large enough sample size we could figure out some numbers to how much school wide food we are wasting.

2. Our second idea was to check the amount of food waste the cafeteria makes everyday. Not all food is taken off of each serving tray, causing food to be thrown out without ever being put on a plate. We believe that recording the amount of food cooked compared to amount left over could create data to show if the cafeteria staff is overcooking food on a given day.

3. Our last idea is to check and see if different types of food are wasted more than others. We believe that specific food types are wasted more than others inside of our school. To test this we would follow the food itself instead of the consumers. By recording the amount of food cooked to amount of food left over for each different type of food we could find if there is a correlation between food waste and food type.

Step 2: Meeting with 63's manager
The manager of 63's wanted to see the amount of food waste that is created within one hour of the lunch rush at 63s. This falls in line with out first pre-meeting idea, except she only wanted data on amount of food wasted, in pounds, instead of percentage of food cooked to food wasted. Our idea for collecting data is to take the amount of food waste in pounds every fifteen minutes over the course of the hour. This will not only give us the total food waste in the hour, by adding all the four sections up, but also if there is a specific time in the hour that more people are wasting food than others. On top of this, because we are being given the number of people who will be clocking into 63s, we could also roughly plot the amount of food waste per person, in pounds.

                                                     

Hypothetical Plot

Step 4: Data Analysis v.1

Our initial data analysis shows evidence counter to what we believed would happen in our Hypothetical plot. Firstly, we believed that 46 pounds of food would be wasted within the hour we recorded. In the end we only got 15.5 pounds of waste. Many things could be the result of this, but during the test we noticed that the dining hall was very empty the entire time. Also, we believed that food waste would increase closer to either 12:30 or 1:00pm as people would have to start heading to class. Our actual data shows that more waste was thrown away at 12:00 and 12:45pm. We also recorded the amount of cleared plates to full plates. While we didn't check the amount of plates that went through overall, it trended there was an almost equal number of plates full of food to plates completely cleared.

Final Graph of Data

Cleared Plates vs Full Plates

Module 6

Smart Home Sketch

The idea of our smart home was taking solar energy and running an entire house off of it. To do this we created our home with a slanted roof facing the sun in the morning to capture the most sunlight to transform into energy.

We explored a couple of ideas of electronics that could be run on solar energy, these included:
1) Windows that change opacity depending on users preference. This eliminates the need for blinds and shutters.
2) A pool that wraps around the house and is self maintaining. It has censors inside the water to be able to tell when it needs the pH to change or more chlorine. This takes out the manual task of maintaining a pool to make sure it is safe to be used.
3) The pool can be transformed into a part of the lawn by a special material pool cover. It is strong enough to walk across while maintaining turf grass. This allows it not to need regular maintenance. It also allows there to be extra outdoor space which can be important for houses in rural areas with small areas of land.
4) The staircase in the centre of the house can be retracted up to the first floor ceiling as to create an open space on the first floor level.


Smart Home Final Design

Video Presentation of Smart House:

Best Engineering Ideas for each discipline:

Electrical engineering: The best electrical engineering idea was by Team International. They designed their house to operate via face recognition. To get around the house there is a conveyor belt that works by the individual selecting what room they would like to go to and the conveyor belt taking you there.

Mechanical engineering: The SHUmakers had a very good mechanical design with the speakers for the TV being built into the wall. This will create a very good sound system.

Civil engineering: The best civil engineering design was by the SHUmakers. They designed their house to be completely underground with an elevator that takes you from ground level to 3 levels below ground. The bottom level is a greenhouse which I think is a really good idea.

Chemical Engineering: Team international had a great chemical engineering idea where their fire place is used as both an oven and a means to heat and purify water. The fire place is double sided so it is visible from both the kitchen and dining room meaning it serves both as a food cooker, a house warmer and something aesthetically pleasing to look at.