Some good news! I was selected as a finalist in the Arctic Innovation Competition. This week, on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, the ten semifinalists made Zoom presentations to the judges. My presentation went well enough that the judges selected me as one of the four finalists. Now I have a chance to compete for the […]
Yesterday, I received word that my entry to the Arctic Innovation Competition has been selected for the semifinals. That was good news! I have a little time to prepare a slide set and video for use in the next levels of the competition. There can be 10 slides in the presentation and the video can
During the week, I was tidying up my application for the Arctic Innovation Competition. I slightly improved the 3-D printed components by adding another hole to the face. The prototype now works well enough to demonstrate the working concept and I began taking pictures of it in use. This morning, I finished taking pictures and
AIC Application Submitted Read More »
It has been some time since the last post because I have been occupied preparing an entry for the 2025 Arctic Innovation Competition. This competition is annually held in Fairbanks to encourage and recognize creative ideas for new products or solutions. The innovations don’t have to be related to the arctic, but that was the
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The latest temperature measurements of the biomeiler have had strange variations. The high temperatures were not so high that I couldn’t believe them, but they were higher than I expected. The rate of temperature change, however, was fast enough to trigger my suspicion. The thermocouple I was using for the reference junction had a plug
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This was final exam week at UAF. My partners and I had to finish our project and give our final presentation about it. The device sits on a plywood box which holds the Raspberry Pi and the breadboard that contains the weighing circuit and RFID circuit. The keyboard, monitor, and mouse would be connected to
One of my teammates started a print of the first version of the frame for the inventory system device. The printer ran overnight and I picked up the model this afternoon. The top part of the frame is the spool holder. It carries the RFID board to read the tag on the spool. The bottom
The circuit and code that allows the Raspberry Pi to control an RFID reader/writer is now working. I had to solder leads onto the reader/writer board, but that was the hardest part of building the circuit. It has been some time since I did any electronics-type soldering. Having older eyes makes it a little
Today, I completed building a circuit that can find the weight of an object. It works by collecting the readings from three force-sensitive resistors (FSRs) and passing them through an analog-to-digital converter. The FSRs are the dark, paddle-shaped things standing up from the breadboard. Once the frame is built, the FSRs will support the weight
To measure temperatures in the biomeiler, I buried thermocouples in strategic locations. This is an ideal way to measure temperatures in such a situation. The way a thermocouple works is that two types of metal are welded together and that junction is placed at the location where the temperature is to be measured. At
Thermocouple Issues Read More »