Tri State Area

During my time in the makerspace I put together a portfolio for my tattoo apprenticeship in the upcoming summer of next year. I took every photo and video that I have saved on my phone of sketches, paintings and doodles I’ve done on people and combined it all into one big folder. With the advice of Mrs. Bryan I made an extra portfolio pertaining to every painting I’ve done in these last couple of years, just to keep it in hand and also if I want to expand my senior project to shadow someone who creates murals in the St. Louis area. Surprisingly, it was a tad more challenging than I thought it would be. Not only do I have a concerning amount of photos in my camera roll, going through every single one to find any of my artwork was tedious. Overall I think this was incredibly helpful for my future and it was enjoyable to do.

During the first quarter of makerspace, Alex and I continued helping with the tile board. Since there are some new students, we went to the lowerschool teachers and for a list of names. After we got the list, we typed them up on the templates. I had some difficulty doing this because I forgot how to duplicate tiles and make edits on it. I have them all typed up and plan on printing them out on Thursday. I had to have Dr. Urbano, help me with a lot of the controls on the computer, but now I know that if I want to duplicate (hit ctrl+d). There was also a day where I forgot to save the edited file. This was really annoying because I had to retype them. A big lesson that I have learned is that you should always make sure to save your file. I already knew this sort of, but did not practice it in this case!

Me and Ryan used resin to make chess peices.

We first made the resin using 2 different liquids then mixed coloring in till we got the color we wanted. We then mixed it for 5 mins before pouring it into some molds that were already made. We then came back the next day to look at them but they were kinda messed up because the molds were not completely dry before we poured the resin. Here’s the final project

Ella and I were asked by Dr. Urbano to ask the lower school to make tiles for the new students of the Futon School. This means that we went to all the lower school classes and ask for a list of the new students in each class. Than we will type them up on the computer website. Than we will print them on the lazer cutter. Than lastly let those students design with markers and whatever they want. We will than put them on the wall in the maker space.

I did LED programming. I did a loop with red and blue light. It’s reasonable to think that I also made a lamp. Because we shouldn’t focus on things outside. Instead, what is inside is the essence. This is extra point.

While true is an infinite loop. So there are 20 lights in total, and every every second bulb lights up blue. And they light repeatedly every 0.005 sec with 250 max brightness. Then each light next to the blue lights red, also repeated every 0.05 sec. I learned every line in the loop must be tab over.

while True: 
    for i in range (0,20,2):
        pixels[i] = (5,10,250)
        time.sleep(0.05)

        pixels[i+1] = (20,5,0)
        time.sleep (0.05)

I made a touch activated lamp.

To make the frame I used the laser to cut out the pieces of wood. I connect all the wires to the raspberry pie and coded the LEDs

Using Dall-e, I printed an AI generated picture of a fish tank on transparency film.

There have been a few projects that I have worked on so far this year. I have to say none of them were mine, I mostly just assisted people with theirs. I’ve helped Peter on his project that involves fiber-optic cables, and Miles sword project.

How can we reduce the amount of Geochemical measurements needed to reduce the amount of times we run the Secondary-ion mass spectrometry(SIMS)? This machine costs a lot of money to run. This project started out as my Science Fair Project, where I designed a code that would run data collected from samples of rocks thousands of times and come up with averages and the standard deviation of the random new subset data.

To further this project I will improve the program I currently have by adding more features that organize the data and place the data into an easily accessible spread sheet. The data will be collected and easier to analyze that way.

Overall My Science Fair project helped create the data that was needed to reduce the amount of times the machine had to run in order to reduce costs. A paper will be written about the improvement and how my project contributed.

Github Repo – https://github.com/Blas-U/ScienceFairTextures

Science Fair Project: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qwVFR8dHfpo_7L_ma47hbrZ0Slzg45fPYclIlizYOVA/edit?usp=sharing

For our World Wide Technology project we created Smart bins that measure the weight of trash, recycling and compost in order to track how much waste is produced, to reduce it.

Scale

For this, we designed a scale, that measures the amount of weight in the bin. This scale goes under the bin and senses when more weight is added. It sends this data to our server, which will be graphed and analyzed.

Data Analysis

This data will show us what needs to be done to reduce waste. For instance, if the data says that the trash is increasing in weight at some point in time, we would know something unusual is going on and we can do something about it. Through this we can help educate children on how to reduce their waste in order to better our environment. For example, we could talk about how to reduce their waste by putting more things in the recycling. Our data would hold them accountable, showing us if they are learning anything.

Through analyzing the data many things can come of it. This project helps promote the bettering of the environment through education and waste reduction.

Procedure

In order to create our Smart Bin, first we came up with the idea of improving the environment and involving the community we have at school as a whole.

We struggled to figuring out what would be the best project and how to split up the jobs that needed to be done.

In the end, we divided the work and began working.

I helped design the Smart Bin using an Hx711 connected to a Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi senses when the weight on the Hx711 is changed and sends that to our server.

I also contributed through the promotion of the project. Coen and I interviewed various members of the community as well as everyone on board to create our video of this project which we presented to the WWT staff that judged us.

I went to the kids at our school and talked to everyone about how to reduce weight and about our idea for our project to make sure they where all with us. I also helped advertising our idea and how it could be implemented in the future.

Closing

Overall it was a great success. I learned many things in terms of how to work with a group and how to divide work. I learned the importance of keeping a schedule and everyone on track. I also learned how to talk to large amounts of people to promote a business idea.

We won 5,000$ for the Makerspace through this project.

Next Steps

To continue this project I made a PCB that holds our Raspberry Pi and makes connecting the Hx711 sensors and the LEDs easier.

GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Blas-U/SmartBins