What I Completed
In the final week of school for the term, I didn’t do too much in the way of work related to Winston. I did spend some of the time looking at alternatives for his legs, but didn’t do any maths or design for it yet. I was looking at how other GT2 pulley systems move, and almost all simply had larger motors. The issues with mu current motor isn’t entirely torque – they may have enough to work. It may simply be a matter of motor shape. The benefits of using proper stepper motors, although they’re larger and heavier, is that they have much more toque as well as having a rod extrusion at the point that rotates. That rod may be useful in attaching components onto the motor securely. While I have attempted to make similar rod-like attachments in other iterations of Winston, none of them have yet been reliable. I plan to look further into turning my current servo motors into ones that have similar ends to these stepper motors (the one I am looking at is the NEMA17 from JayCar). This is the final week of the second last term. I did little in the ways of study, other than simple ideation, over the holidays but am ready to get back into it to try and finish Winston in the remaining 4 weeks.
Work Experience
In the first week of the holidays I attended a 5 day long work experience program in cybersecurity and robotics. I was told that I am not allowed to disclose where publicly other than it is defence. For the same reason I was unable to take any photos. During this program, however, I learnt everything from the basics of Python programming (which I already knew), to using Linux to find and deal with malicious software. We also learnt important skills in cryptography, open-source intelligence, circuitry, soldering, and more. I found that robotics was (unsurprisingly) my favourite day. I got the opportunity to dissect circuit diagrams and create prototype circuits for various alarms of a breadboard, before being able to solder it onto a PCB. We then moved onto creating an Arduino-based robot which used bluetooth to send directions and drive around. This robot was really fun to make, as it used libraries I was unfamiliar with so I did have to learn new things and problem solve. Overall, this work experience was surprisingly beneficial to my understanding of cybersecurity and how the process of how to solve problems.
Reflection
The last week of term had me tired so I got a lot less work done than I wanted. As unfortunate as that is, it was not unexpected. I did hope that I would get more done over the holidays, but alas, my procrastination proved me wrong. I still have confidence that Winston will be up to a good standard by the time it is due, and I will have a lot to present on.
For the work experience, I found it really fun and met a lot of great people who are scarily smart. The skills learnt there I think I will be able to apply in future projects, maybe even in this one. Nonetheless, it has helped me refresh my ability to think about problems I am completely unfamiliar with – a skill which is definitely applicable to many areas.
I hoped there would be more to talk about (or at least photos to add) to this post, but I simply have not made much progress over the holidays other than thinking about what needs to be done. The next few posts is where I should be picking it back up, as it is the beginning of a new term, and I plan to focus almost entirely on Winston from mid week 2.