24 October, 2010 in Work by Aonghas

Cotton On Update

So today I was walking past the Cotton On construction site at Westcity and they’ve now got some decor outside saying that a new store is coming soon. In a previous post I mentioned that they had covered up the new location of our store. It’s pretty exciting and hopefully we’ll be able to move in there soon. Maybe that will make my enjoyment levels of working at Cotton On rise!

The anticipation rises....

24 October, 2010 in Events, Interests by Aonghas

Extreme Xtreme Programming

One of my engineering friends, Manu, asked if I would like to join him in a programming competition about a month ago, and at the time I didn’t really know what the whole thing was about. He said that we would receive a free T-shirt if we participated so that was enough for me to say yes. This weekend the competition took place and was held at Uni. The Xtreme Programming Competition is an annual event organised by IEEE and nearly 1000 teams competed from universities around the world this year. The competition runs for 24 hours straight with teams comprising of up to three people. We had to write programs that solved problems that were released to us throughout the day and all the teams around the world competed simultaneously. Because it started at 12am in London, we started the competition in Auckland at the equivalent time 13 hours ahead at1pm. The other guy in our team was called Buddy, who I had met previously but didn’t really know too well.

Team Octave at IEEE Xtreme

Hours before the competition, Manu texted us to let us know that he wouldn’t be able to join us as he had to work. Buddy and I thought we’d still give it a go anyway, even though I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t know enough programming to do well in the competition. Our team was called OCTAVE and we had an allocated space with computers we could use. At 1pm when the competition started, we had a look at the first few questions that were available and I decided I would attempt to solve a problem requiring me to create a median filter for photos. Basically what I had to do was remove noise from a greyscale image by evaluating adjacent pixels of the noise and replacing the pixel with the median luminance of the adjacent pixels. Hmm I think I made it sound more confusing that it actually was. It did take over an hour to work out how to write the program correctly and take into account all the exceptions, but I was very pleased when I submitted my program and it was accepted! A few hours into the competition we had completed 3 out of the 4 available questions at the time, and we were ranked in the top 100 teams (out of 971).

At dinner time I met up with Ming, who was also competing in another team. We had pizza for dinner and it helped to re-energise us all before getting back into the programming. After midnight we got a text from Manu, who said he could join us since he finished work. Shortly after that he arrived and we were finally a full team. We answered a few more problems and stayed within the top 150 teams or so, though in the early hours of the morning fatigue was starting to win the battle. Manu and Buddy decided to have a power nap on the floor while I tried to press on with another problem, but I didn’t last long because before I knew it, I was starting to doze off at the computer table as well. We ordered McDonald’s breakfast and it arrived at around 6am.

The 24 hour competition was a bit too much for some people

I think the competition forced me to learn new skills and ways of doing things. It was a good experience and I’m looking forward to competing next year as well. If that wasn’t bad enough, I then had to work for 4 hours after the competition ended. I’m just relieved I didn’t collapse while I was serving customers!

Too Much for Team OCTAVE

22 October, 2010 in Weird and Wonderful by Aonghas

Cute Dog

Oh yeah and I saw this cute dog today too, I couldn’t get over how big his/her tongue was! :O

Such a big tongue!

22 October, 2010 in University by Aonghas

End of Second Year

Today was the last day of semester at Uni. Although all our lectures had already finished, we still had to go into Uni to give our demonstrations for our project. I wasn’t too fussed about that because I knew that our demonstration would be alright (probably not perfect, but alright! ) and I was looking forward to our class rep lunch afterwards anyway.

At 12pm we had our class rep lunch in the briefing room in the ECE department. The lunch was put on for us as a thank you for our work this year. A few people gave short speeches and our HoD Professor Allan Williamson gave his closing remarks on his thoughts about the year. There was plenty of pizza to go around and I made sure I tried several different kinds.

There was a lot of pizza for us to get full on

The end of the lunch marked the end of my second year as an Engineering student (except for the one exam I still have to sit!). I was thinking of going home since I didn’t really have anything else to do, but luckily I bumped into Caragh and Rebecca near the quad and they invited me to join them to go to the free concert put on for UoA students held in the quad.

When we were allowed into the venue (after being searched for any alcoholic drinks), we were greeted by people dressed in bright yellow giving away free drinks of Lipton ice tea. Since I’m usually too poor to afford drinks like that, I thought I’d take the opportunity to drink as much Lipton ice tea as I could. The promotional representatives even agreed to have a photo taken with me

Me with the Lipton Ice Tea reps

I even saw Calum at the concert with some of his friends. We didn’t stay at the concert too long, maybe because we went when the bands who were not so well-known were performing. It was a nice way to round off a good year at Uni though!

Rebecca and Caragh

21 October, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Garage Door… OPEN!

This whole semester we’ve been working on a project where we had to build a transmitter and receiver for a remote control garage door. This last week has been hectic but towards the end of the week was the business end of the course where we had to give a demonstration to show that it works. There’s actually a lot of technical detail behind the project but I won’t go into it too much.

This week I’ve spent two nights at uni in the labs until 9 and 10pm trying to get the system working and we’ve had a few hiccups along the way. But the bottom line is that we managed to get things working to at the end. Here are some photos from the testing stages:

When we had to give a demonstration of our project, we managed to receive our digital signal at the receiver over a metre away. It was a little disappointing that they didn’t actually have the model garage door for us to physically open so we just had to read our signal off the LED lights.

Our full garage door opening circuit

21 October, 2010 in Interests, Technology by Aonghas

Introducing… Windows Phone 7

I got to play with the display model of the HTC Trophy

Calum told me last night that Vodafone would be launching the new Windows Phone 7 at Aotea Square this morning. I just happened to be walking past when I remembered about it and sure enough, there was a large Vodafone truck trailer on the Aotea Square forecourt. I stepped up and saw the line of phones that were on display. They all looked like they were the same model made by HTC and I got to try using one myself. I must say the phone felt a little big, but probably because I’m so used to my HTC Legend which has a slightly smaller screen.

The initial impression I got from the Windows Phone 7 was that it was pretty speedy and the animations were quite seamless. The new layout was a little different to what I was used to with the tiles and the scrolling mural-like interface. I didn’t stay for long because I had to get to the labs to work on my project but initial signs are good that the Windows Phone 7 will be a big hit. Now I’m wondering if I bought my Android phone too soon… :S

Vodafone showed off their new Windows Phone 7 phones at Aotea Square today

19 October, 2010 in Interests, Weird and Wonderful by Aonghas

The World’s Coolest USB Flash Drive

Today we were in the labs and we needed a USB flash drive to capture screenshots from the oscilloscope. One of the guys sitting nearby heard us and asked if wanted to use his “floppy”. Confused at first, we discovered what he meant when he pulled out his USB drive. He told us that his dad managed to fix it for him when it got broken (his dad is an engineer, of course ). I thought it was such an ingenious idea and I’m sure there would be a market for USB flash drives like this if they were to be produced commercially. Nerdy guys would jump at the chance (excuse the stereotyping!).

The USB "floppy" drive

18 October, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

The Visual Supercity

We’ve been giving presentations over the last couple of weeks about issues facing the new Auckland Supercity and today was my turn to give my presentation. I chose to speak about this idea of a “Visual City” for Auckland. Basically the whole city would be modelled in 3D so that multi-dimensional information could then be superimposed on the model to help city leaders make more informed decisions. It would provide transparency for the public so that they could see changes happen virtually before they became reality. Here is a poster I subsequently made (we had to make one afterwards) that gives an overview of my presentation.

My poster describing the Visual Supercity model

Our presentations were interrupted by a fire drill

A few minutes after I presented, we heard a loud siren bellow out through the building. Admittedly we all ignored the noise at first, but as soon as we saw other people leaving down the hallway, we decided to follow suit. Moments later after we had all assembled outside by the road, we heard firetruck sirens approaching. An array of firetrucks showed up on the scene and some kitted-out firemen emerged from the crowd. Nobody really knew what was going on; we couldn’t see any fire or smoke. Luckily it didn’t appear to be serious and we were all allowed back inside once the all-clear horn was sounded.

The remaining presentations filled the rest of the hour and our teaching assistant Vicky closed with some final remarks. It was our last week of tutorials and I feel like I have learnt a lot about technical communications. Hopefully I’ll be able to use these skills later on in my degree and career.

Me and my teaching assistant Vicky

16 October, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Soldering Revisited

It was my second time in the soldering workshop today

Earlier this year we had an introductory lab in the soldering workshop to learn how to solder things properly. Today those skills were put to the test when I had to solder our transmitter for our ELECTENG 209 project. I had already designed the PCB board beforehand so everything was ready for me to solder. When I sat down at one of the work stations, I had to search my memory for the setup procedures before I started to solder. Luckily there were other people who were also soldering at the time so I peered over to see if I was missing anything. Safety glasses! That’s right, I nearly forgot.

At first my soldering was a little iffy but as time went on, I started getting the hang of it. I didn’t manage to solder everything on today because I had to leave early, but at least I made a good start. Now I just have to cross my fingers and hope that everything I’ve soldered actually works in the end!

I managed to solder on all the major components on our transmitter today

13 October, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

How-To Guide: Making an Inductor

Seeing as I’m in the middle of a semester-long project, I thought I’d share something I learned how to do at uni recently. For our garage-door project as part of ELECTENG 209 we have to make our own inductors for the transmitter and receiver. I’ve seen these things inside computers before but I never thought we’d actually have to make our own. Turns out they’re not actually that hard to made. With a few key tips and a bit of know-how, you’ll be on your way to making your very own inductor too!

Instructions for Making an Inductor

Things you’ll need: - Copper wire (preferably thick-ish) for the inductor - a cylindrical object like a pen to wrap the wire around - wire clippers - electrical tape (optional)

Firstly, cut the required length of copper wire. If you don’t know how much wire you’ll need, it’s better to cut a length longer than you think you’ll need so you can trim it down later. Start winding the copper wire around the cylindrical object by leaving approximately half a finger length at the end and wrapping the copper wire around tightly.

Continue to wrap the wire around, making sure that kinks and gaps are minimised. When you have enough turns in the inductor, leave another half finger length at the end before clipping the wire. Make sure the two ends of the copper wire are facing the same way.

Using the wire clippers, scrape the ends of the copper wire to remove the wire coating. This is important for the next step.

Remove the wire from the cylindrical object and connect the ends of the wire to an inductance measuring machine. The connectors need to make good contact with the copper to give a proper reading, which is why the copper coating needs to be removed beforehand. If the inductance reading is too high, you may need to shorten the copper wire and then repeat steps 3-5 until the right inductance is found.

When the correct inductance is found, use electrical tape and wrap it around the coil of wire to make sure the inductance does not change.

Remeasure the inductance after the electrical tape is applied to make sure the inductance has remained the same

You now have your very own inductor!

Notes:

• The choice of the cylindrical object used can have an effect on the inductance. Larger circular area will produce a higher inductance with less wire turns.
• Keeping the turns tidy and close will help to give more predictable and reliable inductance readings.
• To reduce the inductance slightly, you can loosen the turns by stretching the ends of the windings. Be careful not to stretch them too much though.