24 May, 2011 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Hungry Paddle

For the last few weeks we’ve been working on a paired miniproject for our hardware design paper. We were asked to use a development board (kinda like a mini motherboard) to create a basic game where a paddle on the bottom of the screen catches falling balls/eggs. As easy as it might sound, we actually had to write the hardware description code to make everything work. If you don’t know what that means, basically we had to write code that turns pixels on and off at certain times to display animating objects on the screen. The development board we’re using operates at 25MHz and the whole screen refreshes 60 times per second. We worked a lot with binary numbers so we become pretty familiar with representing information in arrays of 1s and 0s. After a lengthy process of coding, we finally completed a functional game which, in my opinion, is pretty addictive!

We gave our game the title “Hungry Paddle” which is shown on the menu screen when it is first loaded. There are two modes of the game – training and the actual game. When the training mode is selected, the user has to catch 10 balls (or “cookies”) at the slowest speed to complete the training level. Next, the user can choose to play the game and has to progress through the levels as the balls get faster and more balls appear on the screen at the same time. In order to move to the next level, the user must collect the required number of balls before the countdown timer reaches 0 seconds. If the user succeeds in all four levels, the game is won. Otherwise if the time runs out, the user loses and can choose to try again from level one.

We have our interview/presentation for our project tomorrow at 2pm so I’m hoping that it will go smoothly. Afterwards we have a six page report due on Thursday and then another project due next week. Pretty hectic times till the end of the semester but I’m sure I’ll get there in the end!

4 November, 2010 in Engineering, Friends by Aonghas

My Only Exam

This morning I had my only exam for the semester (yay!) but I didn’t think I was totally ready for it yet (boo!). I guess I had nobody to blame but myself seeing as it was the only exam I had and there were nearly 2 weeks between the last day of semester and my exam. My exam was held in the Fisher and Paykel lecture theatre and I tried to find a seat that was nearby the front of the room so I could see the clock.

The exam itself wasn’t too bad though there were definitely areas where I felt I could have done a lot better in. A lot better. Towards the end of the exam I was just hoping it would finish soon so I could enjoy my holiday, but I didn’t want to leave early so I could spend as much time as I could trying to answer all the questions.

After I finished my exam I went to have some lunch and I was sitting in the quad when Chen came along. We had a good catch up over lunch (well, while I was eating) and he told me that he was going overseas to China for a holiday. I wish I could go overseas too!

As I was walking back to the bus stop I saw they were doing renovations to the footpath in Albert Park. Maybe next year when I walk through Albert Park it will be all nice and new!

It looked like they were fixing the footpath in Albert Park

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

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.

20 September, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Writing Lego Instructions

For our technical communications paper this semester we’re learning about different kinds of documentation required in the engineering profession. At today’s workshop for our Instruction Writing module, we were given the task of creating a Lego model using a photo as a reference. After we created the model we then had to dismantle it and write written instructions for someone else to follow in order to recreate the same model. Although I was tempted to pick a bizarre model, I decided to stick with a more conservative mosaic-like box because I thought the instruction writing might be a bit more straight-forward. Some of the other models people chose included a moa bird, an arch-way, a helicopter, and several others.

Nearly half-way through my Lego mosaic box

The actual construction of my mosaic Lego box wasn’t actually too difficult since both sides were identical and fit together at opposite corners. However, I soon learned that the instruction writing part of the task would prove to be the real challenge. I didn’t think it would be too hard at first, but when I started to think about how to explain at what dot positions to connect the pieces without using any diagrams, I started to appreciate the effectiveness of a simple picture! My instructions started to get longer and longer and before I knew it, I had nearly written two pages of instructions – for a supposedly simple mosaic Lego box! Once we had finished writing our instructions, we swapped with the person next to us and tried to create their Lego model using their written instructions. I partnered up with Andrew and I found his instructions to be more straight-forward than mine. I figured out that the instructions didn’t have to be so precise to still make sense. Luckily I was able to put Andrew’s model together (he also had a mosaic box with a different pattern) and likewise he was able to make my model too which was a relief. It sounds trivial I know, but if you ever get the chance to write instructions for Lego without using any pictures, you’ll see what I mean!

24 July, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Inaugural CSE Forum

This morning I had to get up early to go to Uni to play squash with Rose and Angie. I caught the 9am bus into town with Rose and we met Angie when we got there. Angie had booked the court for an hour so we thought we’d just play until someone else kicked us out. It was my first time playing squash for a while  so I was a little worried that my game wouldn’t be quite up to par. We took turns playing each other and it was a pretty good workout. I even wore proper sports shoes this time as well, since last time I wore my Cotton On shoes and they weren’t the best to run around in.

After the next people to book the court arrived, Angie left us to go to her class while Rose and I had lunch together. An old friend Si-yu joined us coincidentally as well. He was the guy who played squash with us that one time a while ago. I didn’t have any lunch prepared today so I thought I’d splash out and buy some food from the quad, though everything there is too expensive!

After lunch I realised that all three lectures I had today were in the same lecture theatre and they were all scheduled one after the other. The first lecture we had was ELECTENG 209, the design paper. We had a special guest lecturer from the library who taught us about the library searching system and how to look for resources properly. It was pretty similar to the introductory lecture we had last year when we were introduced to the library catalogue for the first time. Our second lecture was Electromagnetics with Dr Smaill, and we continued the work we were doing with charges and electric fields. One of the formulae we derived was the electric potential for a point charge, and when we came to the final result Dr Smaill referred to the formula as being “beautiful”. Then he told us that we were going to prove the formula was right and said,

Being correct is important too, perhaps almost as important as being beautiful. -Dr Chris Smaill

I thought that was pretty funny when he said that. It reminded me of a few things that I probably shouldn’t mention here. After my last lecture I caught the bus home with Rose and prepared to get ready to go back into Uni because tonight we hosted the first Computer Systems Forum for students of our department.

I arrived back at Uni in the car just before 6 and headed to the AUSA Functions Room where the forum was being held. I didn’t really know how many students to expect; I emailed all the second year students last night to remind them about it but I’m not sure how many of them actually remembered about it. At first there weren’t too many students and most of them were Part 3 and 4 students, but slowly more people started to arrive before we were split into table groups around the room.

The first CSE forum of its kind!

The purpose of the evening was pretty much to discuss some key issues about the Computer Systems specialisation and talk about ways in which we can make our degree program engaging and appealing to prospective students and future employers. We wanted to come up with ways to make our degree more visible to others in an attempt to combat the dipping student enrolment numbers. At our table there were mostly second year students but we also had a fourth year student to sort of facilitate the discussion at our table. We each had to fill in a short questionnaire answering questions about why we like Computer Systems and what we’d like to get out of the degree.

After all the semi-formal things were out of the way, we were treated to some pizza and drinks. Actually there were heaps of pizzas! I think they were expecting a bigger turn out. But I didn’t mind, at least that meant more pizza for me . I had a chat with a few new people who I had seen around the place before but never actually talked to so that was nice. Overall I think it wasn’t too bad an event. I was speaking with a couple of second year students and they agreed with the idea of organising a get-together for just the second year Computer Systems students so that we get to know one another. It’s sometimes hard to pick out the CSE students from the group because we’re always mixed in with all the Electrical students!

Pizza, pizza and more pizza

19 July, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Full Steam Ahead

After finding out that I managed to pass all my papers last semester (what a relief!), it was back to business at Uni today. I was getting worried for a while after my exams because the thought of failing any of my exams meant that I would not be allowed to enrol in one of my second semester courses. I really didn’t want to become a split-year student because that could just get messy so I was considering taking a break from Uni if I did fail any papers and finding an Engineering job for the rest of the year instead. As luck would have it though, I can put that past me – for now.

My first class today wasn’t until 1pm so I had a bit of free time in the morning… well, to sleep in! On the way to Uni Jesse and Luke Dickinson caught the same bus, though we only started talking after we had got off the bus behind the Aotea Centre. My 1pm lecture was Object Oriented Design (COMPSYS 202), which is pretty much a programming paper. We were introduced to the Linux operating system and were told that we would be learning how to program in the C++ language this semester. Straight after our first lecture, the second class was in the same lecture theatre so I didn’t have to move. Dr. Chris Smaill, who taught us for ELECTENG 101 last year, returned to introduce himself again for this semester’s Engineering Electromagnetics (ELECTENG 204). The introduction and course overview was pretty brief and we were already into the course material in the second half of the lecture!

Finally today, I had my first tutorial for my Technical Communication for Engineers paper (ENGGEN 204). We were welcomed by our teaching assistant Vicky, who gave an overview of the course and outlined the different modules we will be covering in the next 12 weeks. The first module is working in Microsoft Excel and Word, learning how to use the different functions and tools that are available. Although there were a couple of things that were slightly new to me, some parts of the tutorial seemed rather trivial, especially such things as “navigating around a spreadsheet using the scroll bars”. I would have thought that was implicit. Then again, if I can gain marks for simple things like that then I’m not complaining!

The first day back at Uni wasn’t too bad all in all. I’d give it about a 7/10 in terms of excitement. And for once I’m on top of all my course work now, I just need to keep this up for the next 12 weeks and I should be fine!

10 May, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Welding for Beginners

All the gear we needed for welding

Tonight I continued my nine week workshop practice course at AUT. We completed the lathe machine work last week so it was time for another rotation, and this time we were introduced to welding. Our teaching assistant’s name was Makirai Henry and he gave us a prep talk before we started. He emphasised the importance of wearing our eye protection helmets to prevent us from getting “arc eyes”, a painful eye condition caused by exposure to bright light. We were sent to our booths to set up our welding machines and make sure all the settings were set correctly. When we gathered around in a group again, Makirai told us that we would be beginning with arc welding and demonstrated how to make a simple weld. At first it looked pretty scary because of all the sparks flying around everywhere, but he reassured us that it was simple to ignite the stick once we got used to it. We took turns striking the metal to start the weld and I was pretty nervous when it was my turn. I wasn’t so much worried about the sparks by that time, but just the fact that I was effectively blindfolded when I had my helmet on since the lens was so dark. That meant that I couldn’t even see where I was striking the arc and I didn’t want to miss the metal obviously!

This was the welding machine we used to do arc welding

Our first task with our welding machines was just to make simple lines of welds keeping them even and straight. My first couple of welds were quite terrible to be honest; they probably wouldn’t hold anything together! But after a while I started getting the hang of it, and by the time I was up to my 6th weld, things were looking a whole lot better. I was even complimented by Makirai, the welding man. At the end of the session, we were told to dump our pieces of metal in the rubbish but I decided to hang on to mine, since it was my first welding experience. It doesn’t really have any use though, perhaps maybe just a paper-weight.

I’ve only got another two weeks left of my workshop practice at AUT and then it will be all over. Despite initially feeling a little apprehensive about spending 3 hours every week in a workshop, I think I’m actually going to miss it when it’s all over. Next week we’ll be finishing off arc welding before moving on to mig welding. I wonder what that will be like.