The Team, The Team, The Team

Former Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler gave his famous "The Team, The Team, The Team" speech in order to emphasize the fact that no individual is more important than the team. It doesn't matter if you have a star QB if the o-line can't block for him or the D always gives up too many points. That is why our Smart Surfaces team, and our roles within the team, are so important. I got placed with a great team; everyone brings unique skills, is enthuasiastic, flexible, creative, and we can all bounce ideas off one another. The six of us have one common ground - we bring all innovative and exciting ideas to the project. Everyone works on all aspects of the project but we have a few recurring tasks and administrative issues that having a point person on will be extremely helpful. Here's how we divided those roles:

Scribe - Lindsey
Moneybags - Me
HAL - Dylan
Inventory - Yun
Visionary - Erika
Head Honcho - Branden

I'll be keeping an eye out for our overall budget and making sure we get everything ordered that we need to.
After our most recent meeting I really like the direction of the group, we are trying to tackle a major issue that hasn't been addressed at the power house yet and we have some really cool inspiration to go off of. More on this later. :-)

October 7th-9th: A Weekend of Atonement, Football and Smart Surfaces

The weekend of October 7-9 was a hectic one to say the least. It started with my parents picking me up directly from work to go to dinner for Yom Kippur - the holiest day of the Jewish calendar where we pray for forgiveness and atone for our sins. Like all Jewish holidays; the day begins at sundown so immediately after dinner we went to services. Yom kippur is a particularly interesting holiday in that many Jews will fast from sundown to sundown as a means of allowing for more personal reflection. After a long (and malnourished) Saturday of prayer my family went into Detroit to visit my grandparents and enjoy the long awaited breaking of the fast. We had our usual bagels and lox and settled in to watch the Michigan vs. Northwestern football game. Denard dazzled in the second half and Michigan pulled away 42-24. Unfortunately, since the game didn't start until 7:00 I didn't get home close to midnight (16 straight hours of on the go!). It was a long and tiring day - one that was certainly mentally draining enough to want to rest up Sunday, but there were other plans in store. After completing various other tasks all morning (a homework set and some exam prep) I caught the bus up to North to meet with my Smart Surfaces group for the first time since we had been formed. It was an exciting feeling knowing I had an official group and we all wouldn't be changing projects come Tuesday, but it also meant that we needed to get our act together as we started to plan out the rest of our semester. We had a great meeting where we discussed team goals, desires, and rules. I put together the basis of our powerpoint and everyone took a crack at spicing it up with colors and figures. I'm quite excited to work with this group the remainder of the year as we pulled it all together for a crisp looking presentation.

More is to come on our team roles soon!

Working Prototype Video

Just wanted to toss up a more finalized working video of the solar hot water heater prototype. The sound is a little low so I'll walk everyone through the four stages:
1. Sun rises in East - East panel opens, West opens slightly to reflect
2. Sun is high overhead - Both panels open
3. Sun sets in West - East panel closes slightly to reflect, West opens fully
4. Nightfall - E & W panels close up to secure the system and a light show at dusk ensues (Blinking blue LED in video)

We then take a peak inside the system to reveal the black tubing which holds the glycol and heats up through solar energy absorption.

Enjoy:

p.s. - it was a shame the working model couldn't be demonstrated live at the powerhouse. My thought was that the solar panel didn't generate enough power in that low lighting to power all the components.

Solar Hot Water Model

From Sunday 10/2:
I am very excited to get the model built for the solar water heating system. I just finished the coding and using the small servos (extended with pens) I was able to show the pieces opening and closing when they should be. When added to the model it will look great.
Video? Video:

Looking forward to assembly with my team tomorrow!

Power House Visit

So we visited the powerhouse and showcased what we had been working on all week. Unfortunately our model didn't work as well as it had been before, but the video we showed still seem to portray what we were thinking. We got some great feedback about the high structure and repeatability of the design as a negative and should consider really going for the wow factor. The house was not quite what I was expecting as everything is unstructured and the powerhouse loves novel ideas. At least the problem we received was open ended, leaving for plenty of room for innovation. I really like the solar hot water heating design and would like to continue with that moving forward. One thought would be to change the dimensions for each of the modules so its not so square and repeatable. When each one changes with the sun the array would look like a family (some fat, some tall) all rotating at the same time in a synchronized way.