Week Review 9/27/2024
Golf Cart
Mr. Christy put me on the Golf Cart project until I go on CO-OP. Vecna Robotics, a warehouse automation company, is offering us sensors we can use for our golf cart project. Mr. Christy took pictures of the different parts on his tour of the facility and tasked me to catalog what was in the pictures and find what would be useful to us.
The amount of information I can get from the information in the pictures is limited. I was however able to find if they are able to work outside. I found the ambient light tolerance and compared it to this chart I found on the Daylight Wikipedia page. I put the information in this chart.
| Illuminance | Weather |
|---|---|
| 120,000 lux | Brightest sunlight |
| 111,000 lux | Bright sunlight |
| 20,000 lux | Shade on clear day |
| 1000-2000 lux | Overcast midday |
| 400 lux | Sunrise or sunset |
The sensors that we are being offered range from a tolerance of 3000 lux to 100000 lux. Most of them are intended for indoor use, so we are planning on just accepting that we can only test the golf cart on cloudy days. Since we are so far North the light levels are lower than average across the world.
Learning How To Weld
I had some interest in learning how to weld, so I asked the welding teacher, Mr. Jackson if I could learn how to weld in his shop. I was most interested in stick welding so that is what I was practicing. There are four main types of welding: MIG, TIG, Stick, and Flux Core. I intend on buying a welding setup so I wanted to learn something that did not require a big gas tank which limited my options to Stick and Flux Core.
I wanted to learn stick welding because it is the cheapest. After sticking a few times I was able to successfully weld pieces of metal together. I still need more practice with it, but I think that it will be a useful skill in the future.
Helping Sanntana
Sanntana is making a lightbox project. It is a piece of acrylic with some lights shining though it. There is a laser engraved picture on it. He needed some help programming the button and the patterns. He still needs to make the PCB and physical enclosure, but he will probably be able to do that fairly quickly.