February 2024

Mr. Carter’s Visit:

The class had the pleasure to welcome Mr. Carter, a senior officer at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), to view the project’s progress and catch up with the students. Additionally, the class was able to attend Mr. Carter’s presentation on his experience as an engineer and senior officer at the IFRC.

Team Biodigester:

In February, we focused on improving our mechanical system and fixing the problems with the electrical system. We added foam insulation to the tanks and fixed the position of the solar collector thermocouple to more accurately measure temperature. For the electrical system, we were troubleshooting errors in the thermocouple temperatures not reading and fixed the problem by buying new thermocouples and moving the system from a breadboard to a soldered protoboard system. We also improved the code so the system would stay on for as long as possible.

Protoboard for Team Biodigester

Team Lighting:

This month, Team Lighting created more of their 9V prototypes to provide enough for testing. They gave one of their prototypes to Mr. William Carter of the International Federation of the Red Cross to conduct some testing with it. Additionally, they installed a prototype at the Brackenridge Field Lab to conduct some testing and are planning to test along the trails of Austin Parks in the coming weeks. They are preparing for our HEAP panel and are excited to showcase our progress!

Example installation of a prototype at Brackenridge Field.

Team Pad:

In February, the PAD team focused on advertising our quality assessment trials and producing pads for these trials. We met Mr. Carter and received feedback about the pad machine from a first-time user. After our meeting, we began brainstorming ways to make the PAD machine more safe, like implementing a stand and adding a cover for the hot components. Most of the month was spent conducting production runs to make enough pads for our quality assessment trials and handing them out to our participants. Half of them picked up their pads, so now we’re eagerly waiting for their responses about their experience.

Team Pad demonstrating the production process to Mr. Carter.

Mr. Carter, attempting the production process himself to learn the procedure and give helpful feedback to the team for future work.

For a glimpse into the production run, view here: Production Run Timelapse.